Simulacrum
by Hideauze
Summary: Set after the first anime season, Simulacrum tells the story of Shusei Kagari and Shogo Makishima after they are integrated into the Sibyl System against their will - and how they plan to bring it down from the inside.
1. A brave new world

_A massive spherical room whose dimensions could give an observer feelings of vertigo. Hundreds of liquid-filled vats containing... brains? There was no other word. Robotic arms hoisted by steel girders hovered over those vats like doting mothers, sometimes darting with startling quickness to pick up and discard one of the disembodied brains, sometimes disappearing into trap doors to retrieve a replacement brain, identical in likeness (identical in function?), and place it with unerring accuracy into the same vat—as simple as unplugging a defective circuit board and swapping in a new one. The similarities were striking, and frightening, too._

Shusei Kagari couldn't make sense of what he saw. A feeling of dread had accompanied him down the seldom-used service corridors of Nona Tower, down its ladders, hatchways, and emergency lifts, but it had gone hand-in-hand with the expectation that what he encountered at the end would be terrifying and likely mortally dangerous, but still _understandable_. He'd prepared himself for the sight of Makishima's henchman, the guy called Choe Gu-sung, wiring up a bomb, or triggering canisters of poisonous gas, or through an ingenious feat of hacking somehow bringing down the Sibyl System entirely and plunging the nation into chaos. He'd rehearsed scenarios in his head, planned out what he would do in each situation. (Mostly his plans involved diving to the ground and firing his Dominator in Gu-sung's direction until its powerpack ran out, but that was his usual MO as an Enforcer anyway. He was a simple guy.) When he'd finally reached the last fateful hatchway and stepped through, his body bursting with adrenaline and every nerve fiber signaling readiness, he'd been prepared to kick into an action hero style asskicking.

What he _hadn't_ expected to see was the unfathomable nature of the Sibyl System itself, laid out before him in the surpassing detail of a finely-crafted miniature. The sight brought him up short, loosened his grip on his Dominator, made his mouth fall open in surprise. He wasn't prepared for _that_ kind of shock.

"What in the hell am I looking at here?" he said slowly.

"It's the truth," Gu-sung replied. "The real form of the Sibyl System."

He said something more, but Kagari wasn't listening—his attention was rooted on one of those articulating robotic arms, which before their very eyes began to pluck a brain out of the Sibyl System. It sped out of view, its gelatinous cargo dangling from a set of clever tentacles, presumably to dispose of the current model and retrieve a suitable substitute. _No way. This is too much. The Sibyl System is just a brain farm? You have got to be kidding me!_ He shook his head and tried to wrap his mind around the idea that the ironclad rule of the Sibyl System, the Cymatic Grid, the mandatory Hue checks, even the Dominators and the Enforcers who wielded them, like Kagari himself—all of that great machine of society, the whole goddamn structure, was apparently based around the whims of a bunch of _jar-brains_. The idea was revolting. Made his skin crawl, even.

All of this went through Kagari's head in a matter of seconds. The thoughts came and went in a stream of disgust that made him curl his lip and shake his head. Beside him, he was dimly aware of Choe Gu-sung holding up a cellphone and recording the whole sorry vista beneath Nona Tower. _Good,_ he thought. _Let Makishima tell everyone about this. The people deserve to know. The people—_

 _"Elevated Crime Coefficient detected. Enforcement mode switched to Lethal Eliminator. You may fire upon the target."_

Kagari blinked. He quickly shook his Dominator, toggled the safety on and off. Nothing happened. He gave it an experimental tap with the heel of his palm. _Is it the anechoic chamber that Gu-sung mentioned?_ he wondered. _Is it playing havoc with the Dominator's circuitry?_ But his gun wasn't even active! He stared down at its textured grip, confused.

It was only when Gu-sung spun with an extraordinary amount of grace and fired his nailgun at someone standing in the hallway behind them that Kagari's brain finally caught up with events. But what he saw made no sense.

 _Chief Kasei?_

The Dominator fired with a deafening _ka-chunk!_ and the air crackled with ionization. The damage output of a Lethal Eliminator round was high; survival was not in the cards for poor Gu-sung. Kagari watched as his head expanded like a balloon and ruptured seconds later, drenching both him and Chief Kasei in blood and bone matter.

 _Gross._

"Chief Kasei, what's going on?" Kagari tore his eyes away from Gu-sung's dripping carcass and met Kasei's gaze.

Or it _would_ have been her gaze, if only she'd had one. What stared back at him was a ruined human face hideously grafted to a metal skull, with a blue lens staring at him like cold fire… It was instantly clear that he was looking at a cyberized lifeform like Toyohisa Senguji, the billionaire madman with a penchant for human-hunting. But Chief Kasei was human—or she was supposed to be. None of it made any sense!

"You're not human." Kagari loosened his grip on the Dominator. He doubted that it would even fire for him in light of this revelation. "What's going on here, Chief?"

"Oh, Enforcer Kagari," said Kasei sadly, and the cyberized voicebox must have been damaged by Gu-sung's nailgun, for it was an inhuman voice, more like a distorted loudspeaker than a human woman. "If only you had gone with Enforcer Kogami and Inspector Tsunemori in search of the criminal Makishima. It would have been better for you."

"Better for me?" Kagari echoed. "In what way, Chief?"

The Dominator that had been aimed at Gu-sung's corpse was suddenly aiming at Kagari now. He lifted his eyebrows and raised his arms above his head. "Hey, relax, Chief. I'm no threat. I'm on your side, remember? Just one of the MWPSB's trained hunting dogs…"

 _"Enforcement mode: Destroy-Decomposer."_

The Dominator metamorphosed into its most frightening form. Its body shifted, rearranged pieces of itself, sprouted new ones. An eerie blue glow began to emanate from the barrel. It was still aimed at his chest.

"I've seen too much, haven't I?" Kagari said ruefully.

Chief Kasei smiled, which was a horrific sight in itself. Pieces of flesh sloughed off her cheek, leaving bare metal behind. "You could say that."

With what was probably his last moment alive, Kagari glanced over his shoulder, at the great collective intelligence of the Sibyl System. He saw a brain being dropped into a vat. He saw Choe Gu-sung on the ground, his blood a perfect crimson pool. And he saw his only chance of survival—which he seized at with both hands, of course.

Kagari beamed at the Chief with his brightest and most winning smile. "Say, you fellows wouldn't happen to need a volunteer, would you? My brain is in tip-top shape."

Part of him knew it was a fruitless gambit. He'd probably hate living life as a jar-brain anyway. But his only alternative was the business end of a Dominator, and well, he hadn't seen his life ending _that_ way.

Then he saw Chief Kasei gazing at him thoughtfully.

 _Oh, just great!_

 _"Enforcement mode: Non-lethal Paralyzer."_

The last thing he saw was a flash of blue light.

* * *

 _When Akane Tsunemori stumbled out of the MWPSB's headquarters at three o'clock in the morning, her eyes red from holo-screen strain, her breath masked with peppermint gum, her hair a crazed mass of tangled strands, the sight that greeted her on the pavement was an unwelcome one. Shusei Kagari stood with a smile in his eyes and a bottle of what she presumed was illicit liquor clutched in his grimy fist._

 _"Miss Tsunemori," he said with a bow. "Might I interest you in a pre-Sibyl curiosity?"_

 _"That's Inspector Tsunemori to you, Enforcer Kagari," she said icily. But she couldn't keep the curiosity from her voice as she looked at the proffered bottle. It was a deep golden color, unlike most of the recently popular carbonated drinks, and its label depicted grand scenes of pre-war Europe, with brown and black bears standing on their hind legs, saluting a nameless flag, along with charging knights and what looked like a castle in the far distance. She squinted. 40 Proof. Was that good? Bad? She hadn't a clue. The only alcohol she was familiar with came in little packets of hand sanitizer, for medical purposes only. Kagari's 'pre-Sibyl curiosity' didn't look the least bit medicinal._

 _"It's good stuff," Kagari insisted, and gave the bottle an inviting shake. "Inspector," he added._

 _How is his hair always so… rumpled? Akane shook her head. In truth, she was somewhat surprised to be propositioned by this particular Enforcer. She had assumed that Kagari swung the other way, what with his impeccable taste for shoes and fashionable clothes, and always being up on the latest trends, but clearly her ability to tell was failing her. Too much time spent cooped up in the CommuField, probably, interacting only with avatars and holograms. In any case, while Kagari was good-looking and had a great sense of humor, he wasn't her type at all. She tried to figure out how to let him down gently. They would have to work together on the Makishima case, after all, and she didn't want to needlessly burn any bridges with her colleagues._

 _"Will that cause brain damage?" she asked with a raised eyebrow._

 _Kagari scratched his head and peered at the label. "You know, I think that might be why they outlawed this stuff."_

 _"Did you drink any?"_

 _He smiled. "Well, there were two bottles before."_

* * *

"Good morning, sleepyhead! You have two events on the agenda for today!" Candy materialized above the bed in a shimmer of projected holographic light and looked down at Akane with a grin. The jellyfish was her usual irrepressibly hyperactive self. "First, you have a conference call with the Tax Bureau to verify your new employment status as a Senior Inspector. Second, you received a call from Enforcer Nobuchika Ginoza of the MWPSB asking you to meet him at Division One headquarters at nine o'clock."

Akane sighed. She fixed one drooping eye on the ceiling projection, where a soft red glow displayed the current time and outside temperature. _Six o'clock. Can I get another hour of sleep?_ She pulled the covers up to her chin. The last fragments of her dreams were fading away, but she could still see Kagari's mischievous smile in her mind's eye. _Oh, Kagari,_ she thought sadly. _Why did you have to get yourself killed?_

Sleep proved impossible to recapture. She got out of bed and let Candy start her morning sequence. Breakfast was 300 kcals: a single slice of jam toast, imitation orange juice, an oat bar, and a fast-acting combination antidepressant/sedative sprayed onto the back of her tongue. Candy showed her the latest styles from the Fashion Walk of the CommuField and she selected drab, gray, businesslike attire. With Kogami gone off the grid somewhere, a fugitive from justice, she didn't see any point in going out of her way to impress anyone. Karanomori was the only person who still showed an outsize interest in Akane's appearance, and the data analyst's motive was quite obvious to her.

That wasn't strictly true, she thought as she put on her shoes and paused in the foyer of her apartment— _Kagari_ had complimented her style on a few occasions. But Kagari was dead, of course.

Her morning commute to the MWPSB's Tokyo headquarters was always an efficient one, even by Japanese standards: a fuss-free boarding of the sleek bullet train, where the seats were foam bubbles that cushioned your body from unwanted vibrations and where broad floor-to-ceiling windows sometimes showed holo-advertisements and more often acted as simple windows. She took her usual spot in the second car, by the ticket-reading machine at the front of the cabin. They departed at 8:25am, precisely on schedule, with a barely perceptible sensation of acceleration; Akane felt herself being gently pressed against the back of her seat. Then, cruising speed attained, she opened her electronic reader's last bookmark and began to read.

When her train arrived at the station she disembarked and took the short walk down Government Avenue to the MWPSB headquarters, a starkly tall building that always reminded her of a butcher's knife pointing toward the sky, and made her way through its glass corridors to the chilly air-conditioned office of Division One. It was a place she thought of as a second home, though its appeal had lessened now that its friendliest presences, Kogami and Kagari, had departed. Instead of a cheerful quip from Kagari, she was greeted by the haughty stare of Ginoza, who eyed her as she hung her coat over the back of her chair and went to the break room to fix a cup of coffee.

When she returned with a huge mug of oily sludge, she went to her desk and sat down. Blowing on her coffee to cool it, she flipped on her monitor and navigated to Division One's personnel roster. After typing in her personal code, she saw faces appear on the screen in front of her—Kagari, in his first booking photo, smiling insouciantly at the camera, and Kogami, staring grim-faced somewhere above the camera, as if his mind had been on other things. She dragged the two portraits and put them side-by-side, then leaned back in her chair, sipping coffee.

Her eyes drank in every detail of those two faces. They lingered on Kagari more, because he was truly lost, with no hope of a sudden joyful reappearance, whereas Kogami… well, he could be standing right outside at that very moment, couldn't he? She didn't know exactly _why_ she committed Kagari's face to memory anew each morning. It might have been because she saw signs that he was being forgotten by the others. For the first few months after his death, they had all shared reminiscences about his exploits, his practical jokes and his ranking on several popular CommuField games, all with the warmth of nostalgic camaraderie. But as time passed, as Kagari's desk was cleaned out and his possessions sent to his next of kin, he was mentioned less and less often. She was afraid he was being killed a second time.

She enlarged the photo with a few clicks of her mouse and leaned closer.

After some time of intent study, Akane did what she always did—took hold of the sadness that had settled around her shoulders like a heavy, wet wool overcoat, and threw it away. She closed both files. Deleting him from the active duty roster had been on her agenda for weeks, but she couldn't bring herself to do it. _Let the next Inspector of Division One delete him,_ she thought. _Let someone who didn't know him do it._

She put down her coffee mug and threw an eye over the office. _Time to start acting like the boss._

Kunizuka was deep in analysis, her head bent over her monitor, a glow outlining her features. Ginoza was immersed in the composition of some interdepartmental memo that would doubtless be crafted with the care of an office Michelangelo. Karanomori was nowhere in sight, but Akane knew she would certainly be in the Data Hive, which was what Kagari had called her lair, which was what Akane called her server room. Kagari had also nicknamed her the Data Queen, which Karanomori had enjoyed very much. New Guy—she _still_ couldn't remember his name, even though they had worked together for nearly two weeks now—was sitting cheerfully in Kagari's old chair, playing a game on his cellphone, earbuds in his ears, fingers tapping away at the keys. He was fresh out of the academy, having earned top marks and been assigned to the PSB by order of Sibyl itself. A rising young talent, then. Akane saw herself in his eager bright eyes, before the events of the past year had torn the film from her gaze and left her bitter and suspicious, with a Crime Coefficient that obstinately refused to budge. In a way, she wished it would rise—it might make her grief more _real_ , somehow.

 _Is this how it begins?_ she wondered. _Did Ginoza feel the same way, after Kogami fell? Is it an eternal cycle?_

Akane stared at New Guy in silence. The coffee mug was poised at her lips, but she didn't drink.

As if he had picked up on a subtle vibration in the air, New Guy looked up, met her gaze, and blanched. He quickly shut off his phone and turned back to his computer, shooting her a worried glance from the corner of his eye. Even in _that_ he somehow managed to remind her of Kagari.

Akane took a deep gulp of coffee. She turned away.

 _It's going to be a long day._

* * *

Shogo Makishima stood in a penthouse loft and watched the sun rise over Tokyo, a slow brightening that seemed akin to all the painted surfaces of the city suddenly shaking off years of grime and dirt and age and becoming new again. Tokyo in sunlight was a gleaming city and seemed an unrelentingly optimistic place. The colors were brighter and the air was clearer. He felt hope rising in his chest even as he looked at its skyline, which surprised him. _Remarkable,_ he thought. _We humans can change our whole mood and outlook on life simply by witnessing an ordinary sunrise. What an adaptable animal we are. This is worth cherishing._ He sipped green tea contentedly.

About five feet behind him and to his left, and occupying the whole of the generous kitchen island with a mound of blinking and humming computer gadgetry, Choe Gu-sung was in a deep state of communion with his devices. They beeped for him, displayed flashing patterns at his whim, and even called out his name. _It's almost like love, isn't it?_ Makishima tilted his head. _Now I wonder… Could the Sibyl System ever fall in love?_

The idea struck him with such force that he drew Choe's attention. The hacker looked up from his screens and did a double-take. "What's wrong?"

"Ah," Makishima said.

The hacker sat up in his chair and craned his neck to peer over Makishima's shoulder. When he failed to see anything of note in the Tokyo skyline, he looked at his friend and asked again, "What's wrong?"

Makishima splayed his palms wide. "Nothing," he said. "I was just thinking about the nature of the Sibyl System. Its fundamental impulses, I suppose you might say. And I wondered about its capacity for love."

Choe Gu-sung blinked. "Love?"

"Yes. Can the very sophisticated brain of mankind's greatest supercomputer feel that most human of emotions?"

"It isn't."

"Pardon?"

"It isn't a supercomputer," Choe clarified. "That is, it isn't _only_ a supercomputer. Sibyl's architecture is a parallel distributed processing system, or a PDP. That means that each node is, in and of itself, not exactly hot shit. It only mega evolves when the nodes are connected together. That's when the magic happens."

"Interesting. Would that be at all analogous to a human brain and how its neurons connect to each other, thereby generating consciousness?"

"Where do you think the Sibyl guys got the idea?"

Makishima paused. "Ah," he said again. He took a sip of green tea and glanced at Choe's screen. As usual, he could make neither head nor tails of the strings of characters that filled every column of the glowing rectangles. "Is the Sibyl System conscious?"

"How the Sibyl System works, the Cymatic Grid theory of operation, all of that is one big mystery. About the only thing the public knows is how the Hue checks work."

"You are a helpful man," Makishima observed.

"I am an overworked man," the hacker countered, and resumed his intent stare into his screens. They threw an eerie light over his features, making him appear almost demonic. A slight smile creased Makishima's sharp features at the thought that his pure-hearted friend could be mistaken for the evil half of their partnership. What would that make Makishima himself—an angel?

"You are a well-paid man," he said. "You are also the only true believer I have in my rather motley ranks, I'm sorry to say."

"Well, it's good to be appreciated."

"Never fear, Choe. You are." Makishima peered into his cup and swirled the last dregs of tea around. He tried to read his fortune in them—he'd read somewhere that you could do that—but then gave up the idea for being too silly. It occurred to him that he wasn't sure what he would do if they managed to pull off their plan. Say the riots worked as a distraction, and the rank-and-file of the MWPSB rushed into Tokyo to suppress the unrest, leaving Nona Tower undefended. Further assume that Choe's mysterious programs could penetrate Sibyl's stronghold and gain them entry to the inner sanctum of government. If they saw the beast in its lair and it was beautiful, would Makishima be overcome with compassion and spare its life? It happened, from time to time—a burst of kindness blossoming in his heart, displacing his plans like the inexorable ocean tide. Would his own heart betray him?

"You're having one of your introspective freak-outs," Choe said, not looking up from his work. "You know, for a genius with a silver tongue and the entire Japanese underworld begging to do your bidding, you sure are plagued by self-doubt."

Makishima chuckled. "I am, aren't I? It's a character flaw, I suppose. Yours might be tact."

"I spend all of my time with code, not human beings. That's my excuse." Choe sat upright and tapped a flurry of commands into his keyboard. The glowing cube that was the most outstanding of his computers darkened suddenly. Then it gave a long beep, as though acknowledging something, and went silent. Its lights faded, leaving it an inert hunk of aluminum. "Well, that's the last of it. SibylSlayer 2.0 is compiled and ready to run. It just needs to be connected to a dataport in Nona Tower, preferably inside the firewall. Otherwise we'll have to waste time breaking through it."

"Then what will happen?"

Choe leaned back and popped open a can of orange soda. He sipped it and shrugged. "Then we'll know if I'm as good as I think I am."

Makishima's eyebrows shot up. "Are you telling me there's a chance this thing won't work?"

"A very small chance. Don't worry."

"You fill me with the warmth of confidence, Choe."

The hacker frowned. "Was that a double-entendre?"

"No."

"Oh."

Makishima grinned. "Well, if we're quite done here, shall we depart for Nona Tower? We have an unscheduled appointment with dear Sibyl, and we wouldn't want to be late."

"Fine by me. Let me just pack everything up." The hacker began to disconnect cables and coil them up, put his computers in various zippered compartments of an ordinary backpack, place optical discs in cloth sleeves. He handled his equipment with such tenderness and care, Makishima noticed with fascination, that they might almost have been living things. Choe fastened one last buckle around his waist and looked at Makishima expectantly. "Ready."

 _Well, it's time for our date with destiny._ Makishima gulped down the last of his green tea and shut off all the lights in the kitchen. Then, with a last wistful look at his penthouse, he followed Choe into the hallway and locked the door behind them.

"One question, if I may," Choe said as they headed to the elevators.

"Certainly."

"What will you do if that Enforcer is there? Shinya Kogami." Choe glanced at him. "I know you have an interest in him."

 _Now that's amusing._ "Will I spare his life, do you mean?" Makishima considered the question. He was surprised to discover that he didn't know the answer yet, and said as much. "I might. I might not. We'll see what my mood is like when the moment strikes. It would be a shame to kill him. He is the best of the MWPSB. They say he's an Enforcer, but to call a man such as Shinya Kogami a mere hunting dog is to demean his true nature. He is a detective."

"What if he figures out our plan? Aren't you worried?"

Makishima laughed. _Worried? He doesn't understand. I've been looking forward to this day since I first laid eyes on Shinya Kogami. To match wits with him is almost more important than defeating the Sibyl System._

"No," he said, and the neon light fell across them like slashing marks as they exited the building. "I'm not worried, Choe."

* * *

Shogo Makishima opened his eyes and saw, laid out before his eyes like a row of bright packages, the bittersweet taste of chocolate. He blinked, and when he turned his head the flavor of chocolate had been replaced by the sight of the scent of basil, which became the sound of the sensation of ants crawling single-file up his forearm. He tried to sit up and realized that he had no body. He was floating in a void, incorporeal, adrift.

 _Synesthesia._

"Well," he said to no one in particular. "This is unusual."

Experimentally, he flexed his calves. He knew that he _had_ calves, just as he knew that he was human and his name was Shogo Makishima. But the actual calves, the muscle fibers and the bone of his leg and all the rest of it, that seemed to be missing. To his own surprise, this didn't seem to disturb him greatly. He felt calm and surpassingly relaxed, which made him suspect that he had been drugged.

Had the MWPSB caught him? He tried to recall the last thing he remembered, tried to picture the scene in his mind's eye… He saw fields of grain the color of lager waving under the red sky, and the sweet smell of damp soil, and the unmistakable odor of fertilizer. He saw a factory. And he saw a face—whose? He squinted. Dark hair. Tall. It was a man holding a gun.

The gun was pointed at him.

"Makishima."

 _I'm not alone, at least._ "Yes?"

The voice filled his head without having been spoken. It was less like a voice, really, than a thought which happened to trespass into his mind by an unlocked window. It was the voice—or thought—of a man. Was it the man with the gun?

"Our apologies, Makishima. We seem to be having a bit of trouble on our end. You see, your mind is quite strikingly unusual, even by our standards."

Makishima mulled over this statement for quite some time. It contained a wealth of information about his captors, if only he could piece it together. He had the sensation of dullness and felt certain that he was normally quite quick-witted. Now his thoughts were plodding slow things, content to inch along, dragging their heels. Again he considered the possibility that he had been drugged, with greater certainty this time.

"Makishima, are you there?"

"Yes. I accept your apology. May I ask where I am?"

 _This could be the headquarters of the MWPSB. A holding cell, perhaps. I may be strapped to a bed in a hospital room, with a hallucinogen distorting my sense of reality._ But to what end? Once they had captured him, why bother playing tricks with his mind? They could simply torture him—he would tell them everything. He was under no illusion that he could resist interrogation for long.

Again he tried to jog his memory. That man in the field of grain—he was important, Makishima was certain of that. He was the focal point of everything that mattered—probably. _Maybe._ Had he meant to do something there? That factory… did he work there?

"I'm afraid we would have to bring in a philosophy professor to answer _that_ question, Shogo, and at present we don't have one to hand. I apologize for the inconvenience."

The scent of basil became stronger. It filled his field of vision, until the world consisted of nothing more than basil upon basil—and more basil. He felt a pinprick on the back of his neck, then a tingling sensation running down his spine, as if his nerves had fallen asleep and were slowly awakening.

"That is quite all right," he said. "Have you drugged me?"

The voice-thought in his head seemed to laugh. Makishima wasn't sure _how_ he knew it was laughing, just that it was. "No. The odd sensations you may be feeling are entirely the fault of our resident hotelier, Mr Chambers. He is responsible for the first integration of the donor's central nervous system—the wiring up of the breadboard, so to speak—and unfortunately _yours_ is giving him a spot of trouble."

For some reason that Makishima couldn't understand, his fists began to clench. He knew something had gone wrong, badly wrong, and that he ought to try to escape. But he had no inkling of how to begin, so he waited, helpless.

"Okay, Makishima. The scalpel has been put away, I'm sure you'll be glad to hear. The transplant was a complete success, though Mr Chambers is still having difficulty on the software side of things. He is going to do a complete system reboot momentarily. Don't worry—it's just like falling asleep."

"What do you mean?" Makishima said. "I don't understa—"

Blackness.

* * *

"May I take your order, sir?"

Makishima blinked. A moment ago there had been nothing—no awareness, no consciousness. Now there was sight and sound and sensation. He looked down at his body.

He cut a dashing figure in a pure white linen suit, white shoes, white belt. He was a vision in white. He opened his mouth—because his teeth had been clenched around a pipe. He took the pipe out of his mouth and gazed at it. He sniffed at the bowl. _Tobacco._ In his left hand was a glass of whiskey. He sniffed that, too.

It smelled like whiskey.

The waiter was looking at him, eyebrows raised. Makishima smiled back, his expression seeming to say, _Give me a moment, would you please?_ There was a table before him—in fact, he seemed to be inside a high-end restaurant, though the sole patron at present. There was a menu on the table. _Grilled ahi. Seared scallops. Fried calamari._ It was an ordinary restaurant menu.

Makishima lifted his eyes to the waiter's. He didn't say anything.

The waiter shrugged.

"Well." Makishima looked again at the menu. He put down the glass of whiskey and emptied the pipe into an ashtray shaped like a seashell. He cleared his throat. "I suppose I'll have a steak. Medium rare. And a glass of wine—something you think is good."

"Very good, sir."

The waiter took the menu, bowed to Makishima, and walked smartly away. Makishima watched him go, eyes narrowed.

 _So that's the kitchen,_ he thought. _That means the door behind me must be the exit._

The knowledge that he knew of a way out made him a degree more comfortable in his surroundings, even if he still had no idea _how_ he'd arrived at this restaurant. Amnesia was a curious phenomenon until it struck you personally—then it became horrifying. It occurred to him that this might be a plot by his enemies. Come to think of it, did he _have_ enemies?

 _Yes._ For some reason he couldn't pin down, he was quite certain he had enemies. Plenty of them.

"Shogo Makishima!"

He looked up. A man was striding across the restaurant toward his table. Stout to excess, he was nevertheless jolly and open-faced, and wearing a suit of bright canary yellow. A decorative chain hung around his neck with a golden key attached to its end. The key rested against his tie, which matched his suit.

Makishima stood and offered his hand as the man neared his table. The stranger clasped it between two meaty palms.

"Hello, Mr…?"

"Kurou Yamato." The fat man beamed at him. "May I sit?"

"By all means."

They sat.

"You'll forgive the confusion surrounding your arrival," said Kurou Yamato with a smile. "We've had a thousand and one tasks to complete, and to do them in the right order has been a Herculean effort of data-processing, even for us. We aren't infallible, you know."

"Well, who is?" said Makishima pleasantly. "However, I'm afraid you have me at a loss."

"Oh!" Yamato looked at the empty tablecloth and blinked. " _Oh._ You haven't eaten yet! I _am_ sorry, Mr Makishima! You must be completely baffled. This _is_ a blunder. I'm quite embarrassed."

"I'm not very hungry."

"Well, you may not _feel_ hungry, but it is still necessary that you eat." Yamato looked at Makishima earnestly from across the table. His eyes were large and blue and seemed very trustworthy. "You see, Mr Chambers was having a devil of a time getting your schema integrated into our system. In fact he couldn't finish the job entirely without the risk of botching it and possibly doing _you_ irreparable harm. So he elected to bypass the three problem regions of your mind and associate them with food triggers."

"Food triggers," Makishima repeated.

Yamato nodded. "It was standard practice in the early days of cyberization, when wiring up the nervous system was more art than science. These days it usually goes off without a hitch, but again, you are a special case. Your mind simply wouldn't accept integration."

Makishima didn't say anything.

"One of the problem regions was your long-term memory. That's why you're having trouble recalling how you got here. Once our food arrives—" Yamato glanced around irritably, as if seeking out the waiter "—you should regain all of your memories. Then our conversation will make a good deal more sense."

"Cyberization," said Makishima. The word seemed to have a distinct meaning, an important one, that he ought to know, but he was damned if he could recall what it was. "What is that?"

"It is the gate through which you joined our happy company," said Yamato. "As a disciple of Sibyl, you are now in essence a god, immortal and without limits or constraints."

At the word _Sibyl,_ Makishima looked sharply at Yamato. His hands were trembling in his lap. Yamato watched him with fascination.

"Quite remarkable," he said, nodding to Makishima's trembling limbs. "Even with your long-term memory being actively suppressed, some part of you knows that word and responds viscerally to it. Amazing, quite amazing. I've never seen anything like it."

"You say that if I eat something, I'll remember who I am?" Makishima spoke with a good deal of hoarseness. Some fit had come over him; he was still shaking. The word _Sibyl_ had set his heart to racing.

Yamato inclined his head.

"Then let's get it over with." Makishima took a deep steadying breath. "Waiter!"

Within seconds the waiter was, once more, at their side. It was almost as if he hadn't traversed the intervening distance from kitchen to table at all, but had simply materialized out of thin air—but of course that was impossible. He was holding two covered trays. One tray he placed before Makishima, the other before Yamato. The latter rubbed his palms together eagerly and removed the lid with a flourish. On the platter, garnished with red and green peppers, sat a resting whole roasted chicken. At the sight of its glistening golden skin, seasoned lightly with spices and herbs, Makishima's mouth started watering. Yamato cackled and began to carve large chunks onto his plate.

"Your meal, sir."

Makishima looked up. The waiter nodded toward _his_ tray, so Makishima removed the lid. On his tray sat three objects, none of which were food. The first was a tarnished coin with his own face on both sides. The second he recognized as an ordinary apartment key. The third, though, seemed to taunt him with a sense of recognition that hovered just out of reach. It was an electronic key fob for automated laundromats, for customers to pick up their orders after hours.

The waiter bowed to him. " _Bon appetit,_ sir."

Makishima looked at his tray. "Yes. Thank you. That will be all."

The waiter vanished.

"I know it doesn't look like food," said Yamato around a mouthful of chicken, "but really it is the symbolism that matters. Of course it isn't food at all, is it? I don't know what each one of those is supposed to correspond to—Mr Chambers would, but I expect he's busy—but they will each restore a different part of your mind."

"I have to eat these."

"Yes. You see, if Mr Chambers tried to force your mind to integrate, it might rebel. That would be a disaster—you wouldn't survive. But if _you_ voluntarily partake of the meaning behind the meal, it becomes a willing act, and thus your mind will accept Sibyl."

"That word again," said Makishima sharply. "I don't like it."

Yamato spread his hands, as if to say, _Do any of us?_

 _I've had enough of this._ Makishima stared at his plate, then picked up the coin and swallowed it with a mouthful of water. It went down like a pill. He did the same for the key and the fob, then sat back expectantly.

"Okay, I've eaten them," he said. "Now when is it supposed to…"

He trailed off, because he suddenly realized that he was sitting in an upscale restaurant with Kurou Yamato, the famous politician, in fact the political mastermind behind the establishment of the Sibyl System. Makishima stared.

Yamato gave him a knowing smile. "Is it coming back yet?"

Makishima turned his head and let his eyes dissect his surroundings. His gaze sharpened and his body stiffened. Each glance seemed to bring a new, almost unconscious insight to his present catalogue. He seemed to move differently than before. Something about the way he held his body spoke of danger, _promised_ danger.

"You are Kurou Yamato," said Makishima thoughtfully. "You vanished in 2083, the year before the passage of the Justice Act, establishing what we now know as the Ministries of Welfare, Governance, and Research, along with the Public Safety Bureau and the Cymatic Grid. It was believed that you were murdered by a fanatic opposed to the System you introduced, but that was a fiction, of course."

Yamato studied him.

Makishima continued. "You faked your death, probably because of a terminal illness—there were rumors of cancer, and that was during the last years when such a diagnosis could very well be fatal—and used your clout to have yourself integrated into the nascent Karma Network, a name later changed for public-relations purposes to the more benign Sibyl System. This allowed you to cheat death and become a god of sorts."

"Of sorts?" Yamato shook his head. "I _am_ a god, Shogo, and now you are too. We disciples of Sibyl are the first true deities in human history. Mankind imagined the divine, created gods in his image, but it took until the twenty-first century for that act of creation to bear fruit. We are immortal, we provide judgment for our followers' sins, and we are worshipped. That's a god any way you slice it."

Makishima closed his eyes and inhaled softly. He _remembered_ now. The field of grain, the dark-haired man. _Shinya Kogami._ The hyper oat farm. The MWPSB had tracked him there, Kogami and the girl had hunted him down relentlessly, until at last Kogami had fired the bullet into his back that would end their association forever.

What were the last words they shared?

 _"Tell me, what do you think, Kogami? Once this is done, will you find a replacement for me?"_

 _"I don't know. I sure as hell hope not."_

Makishima put down his fork. He had been clutching it so tightly that it had formed a painful red indentation against the flesh of his palm. His head rolled backward. His mouth slackened. He let his eyes study the intricate designs high above on the ceiling of the restaurant; or, he thought, this fake digital representation of a possibly real restaurant somewhere in the world. It could have been a restaurant in his own hometown or in New York City, for all he knew. His eyes traced over the patterns, searching for meaning. A sound began to form deep in his chest, slowly increasing in volume and strength, becoming more real with each utterance. It began as a wheeze and deepened as it came up his gullet by way of his larynx.

Makishima closed his eyes. The laugh started as a chuckle and grew in volume until he was convulsing with merriment, limbs shaking, nearly knocking over Yamato's roasted chicken and sending china skittering away. He laughed helplessly, in the grip of some nervous attack, until his abdomen ached and his throat hurt.

His laughter was accompanied by a single thought, repeated in various phrasings, a thought that reverberated through his head like clashing cymbals: _He beat me. He beat me! I can't believe it. He beat me. Shinya Kogami beat me!_ Makishima felt an incredulous sensation of disbelief. During all his planning and envisioning of the post-Sibyl future, during those long nights with Choe spent plotting and scheming, it had never occurred to him that Kogami and the MWPSB might _defeat_ them. Makishima shook his head. Pride had done him in. He'd underestimated Kogami.

When he finally opened his eyes, he saw Yamato staring at him in shock and horror. The man was half-standing, chicken running down the napkin tucked into his shirt, his eyes wide. Makishima realized what he must be thinking, and the thought caused him to laugh even harder.

"Relax, Minister Yamato," he said, and wiped tears from his eyes. "The cyberization process worked perfectly well. I am Shogo Makishima, whole in body and mind. Your plan succeeded."

Yamato hesitated, then sank down into his chair. He clutched the table as if for support and stared wide-eyed at Makishima. "I thought your mind had rejected communion with Sibyl," he said breathlessly. "A rejection like that is a horrifying sight, as the mind commits suicide by refusing to engage with its new digital environment, and you had such a _look_ on your face…" He trailed off, shaking his head. "Oh, thank God."

Makishima lifted his eyebrows in puzzlement. "I thought you and I were the gods here, Minister."

Yamato sighed. "Old habits die hard, Shogo. We _are_ gods now." He shook his head. "I can give the people a _fate_. That's true godhood."

"It is power, I suppose," said Makishima thoughtfully. "It must be intoxicating for you."

"It _is_ —and it will be for you, too." Yamato looked as earnest as a successful politician could. "We are the last of the old and the first of the new, Shogo. We are eternal. You'll see."

"Oh, I'm sure I will," Makishima replied with a genial shrug. He sat up and surveyed his empty dinner tray, then eyed Yamato's half-finished chicken. "Well, Minister, I'm willing to talk it over, certainly, so long as you agree to split that chicken with me. Is it a deal?"

Yamato laughed.

 _Well, Kogami, you won._ Makishima accepted a chicken leg and conversed absentmindedly with Yamato as they ate, with most of his thoughts simmering idly in the background. _I had hoped to avoid becoming a member of this silicon freak show, but now that I'm a part of dear Sibyl I may as well accept my fate. Opportunities can be found in the most unexpected of places._

He ordered wine, the best that Sibyl could offer, and took a sip, expecting disaster. But it _was_ wine. Relief flooded through him—if he was to live a counterfeit reality, it was one that had its pleasures, at least.

Now that he had agreed to come aboard the pantheon and be a team player, Yamato was treating him as if they were long-lost cousins. Makishima, in turn, was his most charming self. He would take part in this charade for as long as it was necessary to finish what he'd started. He was nothing if not single-minded in the pursuit of his goals.

 _As everyone knows, it's easiest to tear down a house from the inside._


	2. The Lady of Caneworth

The Blue Astrocyte, as the hotel was called, proved to be an enjoyable stay. Makishima had been given a suite of rooms on the top floor, and his view overlooked Tokyo from almost precisely the same angle as did his penthouse in the real world. He suspected that this was by design, a way of ensuring that he settled in more comfortably, grew psychically attached to his surroundings. He didn't mind their presumption, though he did ask Yamato during one of their friendly cafe lunches if the simulation was updated in real-time.

"It _is_ Tokyo, accurate to within fractions of a millimeter," the politician boasted. "The Hue check scanners in every neighborhood double as depth sensors and high-resolution 3D cameras, so it's quite a simple process to generate a virtual Tokyo to give us something to fix our minds to. We learned about the importance of mind-body perception in the early days of the program, when we had foolish ideas of providing each brain with its own idealized environment."

"What happened?" Makishima asked.

"As you might expect, nothing good." Yamato shook his head and gestured at the skyline. "For a short time we thought of ourselves as transcendent beings, unhindered by biology. We _are_ divine, I am not arguing against that, but in order to receive this gift we must always remember our human origins. We are augmented souls, not of a different order than mankind, but simply a step higher on the ladder of perfection."

Aware that he could say nothing that wouldn't be taken offensively, Makishima settled for a peaceable smile. He brought the conversation back to their meal, and the exquisite flavors therein, and found in Yamato an ardent admirer of the culinary arts.

 _Why is he so bent on shepherding humanity into a bodiless future?_ Makishima wondered. _We can't enjoy eating smoked salmon if we're all just brains floating in jam._

Indeed, for advanced lifeforms confined to mason jars of nutrient solution for all eternity, the Sibyl brains certainly indulged in their share of earthly pleasures. Kurou Yamato spoke of the glories of being a god and how extraordinary it was to be free of the flesh's prison—while chomping down on seared mushroom burgers and smacking his lips over the latest craft beer to be uploaded into Sibyl. For all their proclaimed independence, they certainly seemed to be reliant on the outside world.

"And how are you getting on with your newfound godhood?" Yamato inquired between courses, as they sipped Turkish coffee and munched on chocolates. "Is Mr Chambers' hospitality to your satisfaction?"

"I have no complaints," said Makishima. "I haven't had the pleasure of meeting Mr Chambers in person yet, however."

"I expect you will see him in due course," said Yamato. "Mr Chambers is the conductor of our orchestra, so to speak, and at times he must be everywhere at once."

"And what does that make you?"

"Me?" Yamato laughed. "I am a humble public servant. I serve the people from inside the Sibyl System in the same way that I served them from elected office."

"Well, you do seem to have a lot of influence within Sibyl," said Makishima. "It appears that you are its most powerful member—from my perspective as an outsider, anyway."

Yamato winked. "One learns how to make friends in public office, Shogo. I expect you'll learn some of the same skills in your new position."

"Oh?"

"Just as the Sibyl System governs Japan, we have our own governance structure within the System, too. We call it the Diet for the sake of convenience, but really it bears little relation to the Japanese Diet. It is simply a chamber where each member may state his opinion on matters and put forward motions for consideration of future action. There is a chairman—Mr Chambers—and a vice-chairman, yours truly. Each member has one vote."

" _I_ have a vote?"

"You do."

"Splendid," said Makishima. "I'll be sure to use it judiciously."

"To be frank, it isn't terribly important. Most of the time we vote on relatively minor issues—Recreation Lottery winners, changes to the Hue check software, member recruitment matters, and so forth."

"The Recreation Lottery? What's that? A raffle?"

Yamato chuckled. "I think you'll enjoy the Lottery, Shogo."

"Let me guess," he said. "Each month the winner gets to choose the temperature on the Sibyl thermostat."

"Better than that." Yamato pushed saucers and cups out of the way and rested his elbows on the tablecloth. He spoke in a low voice. "Around six years ago, one of our newest members had the idea of bringing new servers online and creating a space for rest and relaxation. As mankind's eternal judges, our burden is a heavy one. We lead stressful lives. We deserve a chance every now and then to feel sunshine on our faces, to walk under the stars."

"You said before that the Blue Astrocyte contained all of Sibyl's environments."

"Yes, but since the Hue check scanners placed around Japan are in primarily urban environments, and they are used to generate our surroundings, the Blue Astrocyte is the same. City living is invigorating, don't get me wrong, but sometimes two hundred brains living in close proximity can feel a bit crowded. We need a chance to stretch our muscles every now and then."

"Go on."

"We directed Public Works to place Hue check scanners in some of Japan's forests. Officially it was billed as a test of the scanners' ability to function in wilderness environments, but really it was about generating content for the Recreation Node."

"I remember hearing about those scanners," said Makishima. "It was in the news. The Ministry of Welfare gave a press release about 'forest trials.'"

"That's right. Anyway, Mr Chambers used the data from the new scanners to generate a place that we call Caneworth. It's modeled after a sixteenth-century German castle. Surrounding it is fifty square kilometers of forests, rivers, lakes…" Yamato shook his head and grinned. "Ah, Shogo, you wouldn't believe how beautiful it is. The resolution is _very_ high—you can smell pollen in the air."

"I confess I was never the outdoorsy type, but it sounds quite nice. And a trip to this untouched paradise is the prize of the Recreation Lottery, I suppose?"

"Not only that. The Lord or Lady of Caneworth—the prize has some theatre around it, you see—has at their disposal no fewer than one hundred latent criminals as servants and retainers."

Makishima blinked. _He can't be serious._ "Are you saying the Sibyl System has broken the Japanese Constitution?"

Yamato waved away his objections. "The Constitution is a human legal document for humanity to adhere to. We are no longer human, Shogo. We follow a higher law. _Our_ law."

"What are these latent criminals used for?"

"They are groundskeepers, manservants, maids… They keep the castle functioning."

Makishima shook his head. "It surprises me, I must say. Even I believed the public statements. I thought Sibyl was unjust and incompatible with mankind's destiny, but not outright corrupt. What separates the Sibyl System from any totalitarian regime? Are your judgments backed by anything but personal avarice?"

Yamato smiled. "You sound like many of our new members when they first ascend to godhood. It will take time for you to grow into your position. You will come to realize the necessity of our actions, Shogo."

Makishima shrugged, but inside he was seething with rage. In the animal kingdom there was a hierarchy, composed of predator, prey, scavenger, herbivore, carnivore, and more besides; there were niches upon niches, and ecosystems everywhere relied upon such variety to thrive. It was the way of nature; there _was_ a place for deception. But he was deeply offended by Yamato's yearning cowardice, his desire to sit safely behind the big screen and play the rest of the world for foolish puppets. He knew with a certainty that went to the core of his being that one day he would have Kurou Yamato's life—probably someday soon.

"Would you like dessert?" the politician asked, and signaled for the waiter. "We have a few minutes before the next Diet session. When we enter the chamber, I'll show you to your seat and introduce you to the rest of the assembly. Don't worry, you won't have to speak. Acquiring the great Shogo Makishima has been on Sibyl's agenda for quite some time. I'm sure you'll find many friends among your fellow gods."

"I will have dessert," said Makishima, coolly.

* * *

"Its nickname is the Stadium," said Yamato as he led Makishima from the Blue Astrocyte's cafe to the wide, steel-doored express elevator at the far end of the room. "You will understand why presently." He peered at Makishima. "When you were still human, did you see the Sibyl Sphere up close, by chance?"

"No."

"Ah, then it must have been your compatriot. Mr Chambers mentioned that during your unsuccessful attack on Nona Tower, one of you managed to breach the armored door of the Sphere, which is where all of Sibyl's brains are stored and networked." Yamato pressed the call button for the elevator; there was a soft chime and a green arrow appeared above the elevator doors, facing down. "The latent criminals of the Recreation Node are not located there—they have a separate chamber, connected by Cymatic Grid to the Sphere."

 _Choe almost succeeded, then. That makes one of us._ Despite his unsentimental nature, Makishima felt the first stirrings of loss. The depth of his feelings for Choe surprised him—not a romantic feeling, of course, but one of powerful connection to a close friend. _I will not fail again. I will destroy this cancerous place._

"For technical reasons I'm sure Mr Chambers will be glad to share with you at some later time, the Stadium that we perceive within Sibyl is precisely the same size and shape as the real Sphere in the basement of Nona Tower. While inside the Stadium, we are able to access our Judgment Aspect, allowing us free entry into the Cymatic Grid. That will be disorienting to you, at first—it's a bit like skydiving, accompanied by a weightless feeling in your gut. You will learn to flow through the Cymatic Grid like the rest of the digital data being passed throughout Japan. It will become second nature in time, and you'll feel like a god."

At that moment the elevator doors opened, and the two men boarded the car. To Makishima's surprise, the elevator held another occupant, a woman of striking appearance in her mid-thirties. She wore simple workout clothing and was covered in a sheen of sweat, her skin glistening under the harsh overhead lights. She was in the middle of tapping out a message on her cellphone, which she lowered when she noticed Makishima watching her curiously. Yamato leaned over and pressed the largest button on the control panel while Makishima and the nameless woman sized each other up.

"Aren't you going to introduce yourself?" she asked, after the silence had stretched beyond a polite length.

"No," said Makishima.

Puzzled, the woman looked at Yamato, who held back a smile and shook his head. Then he cleared his throat and gestured to them each in turn. "Miss Sawaki, I have the pleasure of introducing Shogo Makishima—who I'm sure needs no introduction! Shogo, I have the _great_ pleasure to introduce to you Miss Evelyn Sawaki, one of our newest members. We anticipate great things from her."

The elevator jolted into motion with scarcely a sound at all, only a faint falling sensation in the stomach region.

"Evelyn Sawaki," Makishima repeated. He looked keenly at her face, as if memorizing her features. They weren't conventionally pretty, but there was something about her large, liquid eyes and serene expression that practically demanded a second look. _You could get lost in those eyes._

The woman smiled. "You know me?"

"Sawaki," said Makishima, softly, eyebrows furrowed. Then he snapped his fingers. "Oh, of course. I remember now. You were responsible for the pharmacy killings of 2118. You poisoned at least a dozen pensioners by tampering with their medications. You were sentenced to life imprisonment, but before the trial you mysteriously disappeared in what was presumed to be a suicide. I'd say it's more likely that Sibyl offered you their usual deal—godhood in exchange for the services of a criminally asymptomatic."

"Seventeen," said Miss Sawaki with a bright, friendly smile.

"Pardon?"

"I killed seventeen pensioners," she said. "You said 'at least a dozen.' I wanted to set the record straight."

"You are quite the monster," Makishima observed. "No remorse, even from here on high, where I presume your divine qualities would be most evident."

Sawaki winked at him, then turned to Yamato, who was watching their exchange with unfeigned interest. "You never said he was cute, Kurou."

Yamato grunted. "He isn't, my dear."

"You know what they say about opinions." Sawaki turned back to Makishima, who was studying the lights above the elevator doors as they neared the basement level. "Well, Mr Makishima, what _is_ your type? I have to admit that I find you attractive. I'd like to invite you out for dinner one of these days."

"My type?" He tilted his head. "I admire those people who fulfill their function in life with grace and economy." He looked her up and down. "I admire effectiveness, strength, and resilence. Those qualities can exist independently of a pleasing shape, but it helps if they go together."

Sawaki began to smile.

"You are effective, I suppose, but you are not strong or resilient. I see it in your face. Violence can be a useful tool when employed appropriately, but you use it for your own gratification. I have little interest in that." Makishima turned back to the elevator doors. "I doubt you would enjoy my company, Miss."

Sawaki blinked several times and opened her mouth to speak, but before she could get any words out the elevator doors opened and the echoes of many conversations spilled into the car. Instantly her face hardened, and with a cool nod to Makishima and a warm smile to Yamato she departed the elevator. Yamato held the doors for him, so Makishima followed her into the bright light.

The Stadium was as grand as Yamato had promised. Enclosed by stark white walls like the inside of a gigantic egg, it featured curving rows of desks facing a central platform upon which sat a large reclining seat. _Almost like a throne,_ Makishima thought. _I wonder who sits there. The estimable chairman, I suppose._ Next to the throne, and a step lower, was a smaller seat only slightly less resplendent. That was probably the vice-chairman's. The Stadium was filled nearly to capacity—men and women of all walks of life were milling about, discussing whatever subject was the topic of the hour in Sibyl, like high school students gossiping during a lunch break. It was a very ordinary vista; it could have been any company courtyard anywhere in Japan.

 _So these are the gods and goddesses who terrorize the people of Japan. How disappointing._ Makishima had expected something majestic and otherworldly. Instead, it reminded him vaguely of an insurance company convention.

Yamato was watching him take in the sights of the Stadium, so he tried to look suitably impressed. He pointed to the vastness of the chamber and said, "It's a breathtaking sight, Yamato-san. You weren't lying when you said that gods reside within these walls."

Beaming, Yamato ushered him down the aisle, introducing him to various personages along the way to his desk. Upon hearing the name Shogo Makishima, nearly everyone did a startled double-take before babbling excited greetings. He must have had quite the reputation in Heaven. Not that that was a bad thing. In fact, it might make his ultimate goal—destroying Sibyl from the inside—a good deal easier to carry out. He was the soul of politeness to everyone he met, even going so far as to bow to his elders. Judging by the commotion, he was a smash hit.

" _That's_ Shogo Makishima? He's so young!"

"Are we sure Yamato isn't having a spot of fun? I wouldn't put it past him."

"I heard he was _dead_."

"He'll be the Vice Chairman in no time, just you wait."

"Oh, I agree."

"He's _handsome_."

"Is this Yamato's successor?"

Yamato's expression became less enthused by degrees as they fought their way beyond the thickets of people, pushing through the crowd like holiday shoppers during an outlet sale. Makishima gladhanded like a politician, smiled until his face hurt, and tried his best to be likeable. He was relieved when Yamato finally deposited him into a desk with the name _Shogo Makishima - #200_ affixed to it in gold lettering.

"This is your desk," said Yamato brusquely, and continued down the aisle toward the central dais. A bell rang, and the Sibyl members started to take their seats. One of them, a young man with purple highlighted hair and a sharply-cut dark blue suit, bowed to Makishima before taking the desk next to him. He held out his hand, and Makishima reluctantly shook it. He looked at the man's desk. His name, according to the plaque on it, was Hiroki Masuda.

"Hello," the man said. "You're Shogo Makishima."

"Am I?"

Masuda exhaled. "Sarcasm," he said knowingly, as if he'd just discovered the concept the day prior and was delighted to be able to put his newfound knowledge into practice. "Evelyn did say you were—how shall I put this?" He looked down at the desktop, thoughtful.

"Abrasive," Makishima offered. "Rude. Mean."

Masuda shrugged. "It was one of those. I suppose we shouldn't be surprised, though. You were one of the Japanese people just a short while ago, in the thick of things, _living life_. That's got to make you hotblooded."

For the first time, Makishima gave the strange Sibyl legislator his full attention. "What do you mean by that, hotblooded? Are you a reptile?"

Masuda laughed. "No, it's just that some of us Sibyl members have been inside for a long time. Decades. Our very oldest members have experienced the burden of centuries of godhood."

 _That can't be right._ "The Sibyl System was created in 2084," said Makishima. "Even the Karma Network, its predecessor, was only online for ten years during its initial trials."

"Time doesn't run at the same perceived speed here. It… varies." Masuda made a face. "If you ask me, it's a bug, not a feature. I want to keep up with real world trends, keep my finger on the pulse, you know? But that's impossible here. Even with the scanners giving us updated imagery, it doesn't update what's going on inside people's _heads_. That's what we need to know, if you ask me."

"It's not enough to judge humanity's _actions_ and to know their emotional states," said Makishima. "You want to read their thoughts, too."

Not catching Makishima's tone, Masuda nodded eagerly. "Exactly. You get it. Well, from one optimist to another, let me just say that what's in the R&D pipeline will please both of us."

 _He's friendly with Sawaki, which implies a social link with Yamato. And Yamato is Vice-Chairman. Why is he telling me this? Is it a message from Yamato's faction?_ It was frustrating to be completely ignorant of the intricacies of Sibyl politics. Every man and woman in this room was jockeying for position, advantage, power, and influence. There were schemes going on even at this very moment, probably within earshot, and Makishima was blind to them all. For all he knew, Hiroki Masuda could be trying to enlist his aid in some kind of plot. But it was impossible to know for certain.

"Oh? That's quite interesting. Please continue."

"Well, the word is that Mr Chambers has some new tricks up his billowing sleeve. I swear, that fellow's shirt is like a circus tent. Could fit all of Tokyo inside it." Masuda grinned.

"Can he pull it off?" asked Makishima. He had no idea what _it_ was.

Masuda looked astonished. He reared back and crossed his arms. "How can you ask that? I mean, after everything the old man has done for us. He's the Universe's gift to humanity. He'll _never_ fail us. Frankly, I'm shocked you could even say such a thing."

"I'm new here," said Makishima by way of explanation. "I didn't mean to offend, Masuda-san. I apologize." And, still seated, he turned and bowed to the other man, very low.

"Oh, it's all right. You _are_ new here. I should remember that."

"This new trick, though. It sounds too good to be true." Makishima put skepticism into his voice and manner. "How does it work?"

Masuda glanced around. Seeing that nobody was listening to their conversation, he leaned closer and whispered. "The Okaba Street Trials. You know? They were a complete success." He winked at Makishima. "Soon enough you and I could be free of this place."

Despite Makishima's best efforts, nothing more could be drawn out of Masuda. It occurred to him that this could be a calculated attempt to supply him with information—or _mis_ information. He didn't know what Hiroki Masuda's reputation was like within Sibyl. Was the man a purple-haired crackpot, ignored by everyone? Or was he privy to the mysterious Mr Chambers' ultimate plans?

But his musings were interrupted by another bell sounding, this one as clear and high as shattering icicles. Its sound rang throughout the entire Stadium and brought about instant quiet. Even Masuda, who had been murmuring to himself, fell silent. Makishima sat up straight and focused his attention on the dais far below, which appeared very small from this distance. The larger seat was empty. The lower was filled by Yamato's prodigious bulk.

Yamato was holding up a tiny silver bell and glaring around at the assembled members. "If it's all right with everyone, I'd like to begin today's proceedings. We have several matters on the docket. Mr Xu?"

A small elderly man with neatly parted gray hair stood. His desk was toward the center of the Stadium, nearest the dais. Apparently of Chinese ancestry, he wore an ordinary salaryman's suit and tie. He might have been the CEO of any modern company, judging from his appearance.

Mr Xu cleared his throat. "For today, the thirtieth of April, there are five motions up for consideration by the representatives of Sibyl. The first is the induction of our newest member. I will turn this matter over to the Chairman's representative. Vice-Chairman Yamato?"

Yamato climbed to his feet and seemed to glare up at Makishima. "You will all have heard many things about Shogo Makishima. I am here to tell you that all of them are true. He is as cold and logical as rumor suggests." He paused and looked around the Stadium. Rapt faces stared back. "These qualities make him exceptionally well suited for membership in our ranks. As gods and goddesses we cannot share in the emotional life of our charges; it is _our_ task solely to judge such lives from afar. We cannot sympathize and so we cannot be swayed. I ask that you vote to accept Shogo Makishima as the Sibyl System's two-hundredth member as a replacement for the departed Mr Fujimoto. But first, I would like to invite Mr Makishima to say a few words."

Makishima climbed to his feet. The sensation of hundreds of curious stares fell upon him. He turned and swept his gaze over the gathered faces. Masuda was smiling encouragingly at him. Sawaki, he noticed, was the sole scowling face among a sea of welcoming smiles. He cleared his throat and began to speak, haltingly at first.

"I thank you, Vice-Chairman, for that warm welcome. I thank all of you, assembled deities, for the confidence you have placed in me. I cannot claim to have _desired_ membership in the Sibyl System, or to be here entirely of my own free will, but now that I have it I will execute its duties faithfully and to the best of my ability. Thank you."

He bowed in the traditional style. He bowed again to Yamato as Mr Xu rose to his feet. Then he sat back down.

"Very nice speech," said Masuda. "Brief, and to the point. Not like that windbag Yamato."

Makishima blinked. _So much for Masuda being one of Yamato's men._ "Thank you, Masuda-san."

He accepted congratulations and welcomes from a few nearby Sibyl members—who all seemed like genuinely polite, pleasant people—and returned his attention to Mr Xu.

"The votes have been cast. Tabulating." Mr Xu studied a hologram that appeared from a keyhole lens on his desktop. It contained a series of tiny revolving green and red symbols. Makishima was too far away to see what they signified. The green, however, far outnumbered the red. "By a vote of one-hundred-and-ninety-two to six, with one abstention, Shogo Makishima is hereby granted membership to the Sibyl System. Welcome, sir."

Makishima nodded.

"Our next order of business concerns the Recreation Lottery," Xu said. "As many of you have heard, we have our latest winner—and it is the second time that this particular Sibyl member has won." There were a few cries of _"Recount!"_ and _"It was rigged!"_ before Xu was allowed to continue. He gazed severely at the assembled members. "I would ask the members to uphold the decorum of this chamber. Thank you. As I was saying, the Recreation Lottery has a repeat winner—and it is Miss Evelyn Sawaki. Miss, would you care to make a statement?"

Sawaki rolled her eyes and made a rude gesture.

"Evidently not. As you wish." Mr Xu consulted his hologram. "Miss Sawaki will be departing for her six month term in the Recreation Node tomorrow. If anyone wishes to speak with her concerning any urgent matters before then, please do so without delay. I need not remind you all that departure to the Recreation Node is irreversible. Once accepted, you _cannot_ return until the term has elapsed. Miss Sawaki, and any future winners that may be present, please keep that in mind.

"Our next matter concerns the recent malfunctions of the brain pods in Sector 8 of the Sibyl Sphere. It is thought that these malfunctions are due to a software error, and Mr Chambers believes that the most recent bugfix should solve the matter. If anyone has a complaint to file, please go through the appropriate channels, or speak to me after the session is over."

As Xu droned on, Makishima half-listened. He let his mind wander and began to study his new colleagues with a view toward making a comprehensive mental dossier on each of them. It would take some time—nearly two hundred people in all—but it was a necessary step for him to start developing influence. To outmaneuver Yamato and Mr Chambers would require careful planning.

It was amusing, but Makishima felt more alive than he had in years—and all it had taken was for him to die and be uploaded into a computer network.

 _They tried their hardest to get me into the Sibyl System for a reason. Someone has plans for me. I need to find out who they are._ Was he meant to be somebody's tool, or something more—like a weapon?

He needed to find out, and fast.

* * *

"Some of our new members have trouble with the concept of Judgment," said Yamato later that day, his eyes on a contoured reclining seat that hung from the arched ceiling of the Judgment Room like a bat clinging upside down from a stalactite. It was one of dozens of such hanging chairs in the Room. Most were empty, the touchscreens on their armrests blank, but a few were presently occupied by Sibyl gods. Those chairs were raised higher than the unoccupied ones, and their touchscreens showed a vast quantity of data in small type, graphs, and the occasional image or video. Yamato gestured to the field of dangling chairs. "They have the idea that the people out there come to _them_. Not so."

"How do you mean?"

Yamato nodded toward one of the chairs that was not in use, and they began to walk toward it. "As a member of Sibyl, your brain resides inside the Sibyl Sphere, nurtured by the Nutrient Arms and protected by Nona Tower's considerable defenses. When we walk around the Blue Astrocyte, we are not actually moving, yes?" Yamato waited for Makishima's nod. "Our brains are immobile. We simply _perceive_ new places, and our minds convince us that they are quite real."

"I understand," said Makishima. "This is basic stuff, Yamato-san."

"For a man like you, perhaps so," Yamato replied. "But trust me when I say that not all of your colleagues can grasp such technical ideas. Some have quite profoundly wrong ideas about the nature of their new universe. But that is beside the point. We were talking about Judgment."

Makishima nodded to the Sibyl members strapped into the hanging chairs. They seemed to be unconscious, or perhaps dreaming. One man sat slack-mouthed, drool running down his chin, even as scintillations of color shone from his touchscreen, indicating the passing of a powerful Judgment. "They are in the middle of their Judging duties, I take it?"

"Correct. They have a schedule—and a quota, believe it or not—but most don't adhere to it, and in all honesty, we are fairly lenient about such matters. It isn't the quantity of judging that goes on, we like to say, but rather the quality."

They had reached the chair, and Yamato went over to the touchscreen and tapped buttons in a well-rehearsed sequence. The chair beeped in acknowledgement, lowered itself, and lifted its armrest. Makishima raised an eyebrow.

Yamato smiled. "It's not intelligent, Shogo, don't worry. Sometimes a chair is just a chair."

"This is mine, then?"

"They aren't assigned, but this one will be yours for this session, yes. Take a seat and make yourself comfortable."

Makishima did so, lowering his body gingerly into the foam cushions of the Judgment Chair, half-afraid it would suddenly latch onto him and take off toward the ceiling, having sensed his designs on Sibyl. But it did no such thing, and in fact it was exceptionally comfortable. The foam backrest contoured itself to his body, and as he relaxed he could feel tiny motors shifting the segmented splines of the chair into place, more perfectly complementing his form.

"I feel like Captain Kirk, sitting in the big chair," said Makishima with a lidded smile.

Yamato blinked. "Is that an allusion to something? I'm afraid I don't understand."

"Just an early television series. Few people have heard of it, these days."

"I'll be sure to look into it," said Yamato politely. "Now, are you at ease?"

"I am. This is quite nice."

"Very good. Now, I don't normally go to the bother of explaining the technical nature of Judgment to new members, but you are more promising than most." Yamato scratched his ear and frowned. "Let me ask my earlier question again, but this time in reference to the Judgment. Where does a Sibyl god's brain go when he's judging?"

"Nowhere," said Makishima. "It stays in the Sibyl Sphere. Only his perceptions change."

"Yes. What happens to his _mind?_ "

Makishima opened his mouth, about to repeat what he had just said, but something made him pause. _He wouldn't ask if the answer was the same. But how can it be different? Of course the mind stays with the brain—how can the two ever separate?_

"I see that you've already guessed where I was headed," said Yamato, smiling. "Allow me to explain."

"Please do."

"The Cymatic Grid is a high-bandwidth quantum network capable of carrying vast amounts of information. You know this from the official government sources, perhaps, but probably more from your attempts to destabilize the government." Yamato gave him a mock-scowl. Makishima shrugged. "The crucial thing about Judgment that you must understand is that your _intuitive_ understanding, in this case, is exactly correct. Your mind _is_ leaving your brain; _you_ as a thinking, conscious entity are no longer in the Sibyl Sphere, or Nona Tower, at all. You are out _there_ , in Japan."

 _He must be joking,_ Makishima thought. _How can that possibly be true? How can my mind leave my brain?_

His expression must have seemed incredulous, for Yamato smiled and shook his head ruefully. "Bear with me, and I'll explain how it works."

"You mean that literally?" he asked. "The mind of a Sibyl judge is in Tokyo when the person they're judging is in Tokyo?"

"Yes. You see, the Judgment Chairs are not simply for your ergonomic delight. Rather, they contain quite sophisticated psychic machinery that works in tandem with the Nutrient Arms in the Sibyl Sphere. Your brain is the hardware that gives rise to your consciousness—but that consciousness is itself just energy, really. You, Shogo Makishima, are nothing more than a three-dimensional lattice of continually firing electrical impulses, arrayed according to the unique design of your own neural network. This network can reside in the skull, where it's mediated by the flesh, but it can also travel along the right kind of cable. That's where the Cymatic Grid comes in. The Grid's quantum nature gives it sufficient bandwidth to transport, whole, a person's simulated neural network. For all intents and purposes, this _is_ your mind, since your brain goes dark after Judgment begins."

"Goes dark—what does that mean?" Makishima demanded.

Yamato scratched his chin. "Well, it means brain stasis. Total cecessation of all neuronal activity. Your brain becomes inert—but still alive, of course. Oxygenation and metabolism continues. But the essence of your personality, your mind, is no longer there."

"And there are no side effects from that?"

"There are a few. That's why Mr Chambers invented something called the Assembly, essentially a type of augmented virus with a degree of programmability that flows through your bloodstream, bypassing the blood-brain barrier, repairing tissues, modifying DNA, pruning neural connections. They keep the brain in good shape until the mind returns from Judgment."

 _Pruning neural connections. He makes it sound so simple. Just unleash a few billion tame viruses and tell them to destroy neurons, inject neural growth factors, do some brain renovations…_

"You have the Assembly already, of course," Yamato added.

Makishima turned to look at the Vice-Chairman.

Yamato chuckled. "Don't let it disturb you too much, Shogo. The Assembly are one of the reasons we were able to save your life in the first place—they carried out some of the work on your arteries during your emergency flight to Nona Tower. Your gunshot wound was almost fatal. Whoever shot you certainly meant to get the job done."

 _Yes, Shinya Kogami is not one for half-measures._

"As I was saying, the Assembly keeps your brain in tip-top shape while you carry out your duties. When your mind has returned, it's restored to the brain good as new."

"Is there any time when the mind is on the Grid that the brain shows any activity by itself?" Makishima asked curiously. "In other words, are there ever two consciousnesses existing simultaneously?"

"We try to avoid metaphysical anguish as best we can, so no. The brain is devoid of activity."

"And what if Mr Chambers decides to use his Assembly to change my personality?"

Yamato looked at him strangely, then away. He cleared his throat. "You don't have to worry about that, Shogo. Such things happen very rarely in Sibyl."

"But they _do_ happen."

Yamato sighed. "They have occurred once or twice. That is all I will say on the matter." He busied himself in the act of pretending to check if Makishima was seated properly. Then, having moved the armrest up and down, he tapped a series of commands into the touchscreen, which prompted a gentle vibration in the hanging chair. Makishima felt a sensation of motion and realized that he was being carried upwards. The ascent halted at the same height as the other Sibyl gods—about halfway to the ceiling. "I've uploaded your Judgment List into your chair's computer. You can select whichever citizen you wish, but the priority Judgments are those highlighted in red on your HUD. Please try to focus on those first."

A floating heads-up display projection appeared before Makishima's eyes, showing him the same content that was displayed on his touchscreen. He saw endless lists of names—there must have been at least a thousand—and the rainbow hues of wildly varying Psycho-Passes. Each hue was overlaid on a portrait of a Japanese citizen; one, a pretty young woman with glasses, was a light auburn color, and her note said _Lied about cheating on her boyfriend; steals cash from the lockbox at work. Target Crime Coefficient: low-60s_. Others, like Hiraku Akiyama, said _Fantasizes about defrauding his investors and fleeing to Hong Kong; once hit a dog with his car. Target Crime Coefficient: 75._ The notes were brief and usually interesting to read.

"These don't go into much detail," said Makishima, still peering into the swarms of data that floated past his field of vision like drifting cobwebs. "And most of them read like someone's petty gossip. Should I expand on them?"

"Don't bother," Yamato replied. "We haven't the manpower to develop detailed histories of our subjects. The breakthrough of the Sibyl System lies in harnessing humanity's own ability for leaps of logic and intuition and applying them to the problem of measuring Psycho-Passes. Observe someone for a few minutes, look into their past, rummage around their memories, but don't shillyshally. Go with your gut. Is this person likely to be useful to society, and in what way? _Judge them._ "

Makishima poked his head out of the projection-cloud and frowned down at the Vice-Chairman. "That's it?"

"Yes. Why, were you expecting more?"

Makishima thought for a moment. "Well, yes. In my view, Sibyl would be free of bias, with a way of scanning citizens' potential without error or favoritism. I thought there would be a tool we could use to make sure our judgments are true and accurate."

Yamato shook his head. "It's accurate enough, Shogo. We make certain that our members have certain qualities that make their judgments reliable. Otherwise we wouldn't have chosen you in the first place."

 _It's exactly as Choe and I thought: nothing more than the power-hungry given the right to judge the naive and foolish. There is no validity to anything the System does. It hangs around mankind's neck like a yoke, keeping him from his destiny of true self-determination._

"Are you prepared to give it a shot?"

Makishima nodded.

"You're almost ready." Yamato pointed to an LED above his headrest, which was now yellow. "When it's ready, you'll hear a tone in your left ear and experience the subjective sensation of a fall from a great height." He hesitated. "And Makishima, try to stay calm, yes? Your first Judgment will be the worst. It may seem like a dream—or a nightmare. This will be the first time your mind experiences the Cymatic Grid. It can be… traumatic, yes?"

 _"Judgment beginning in ten seconds."_

The computer voice came from somewhere above them, disembodied. Makishima looked at Yamato's broad smiling face and gave a thumbs up, though he felt apprehension at the idea of being paralyzed and having his mind forcefully ejected from his body. It would be like dying. What if he couldn't get back?

"Good luck!" Yamato cried. The LED flashed a forest-green signal of readiness.

Then a tone was sounding in Makishima's ear, a tone that became something sharp and vicious, like distortion from an electric guitar amplified a thousand times. The sound drove into his skull and clung to his frontal lobe, flowing like melting tungsten, finding each crack and entering it, seeking the identity within. He screamed in agony and clawed at his own face, trying to rip the mask off. His skin flamed like burning paper.

Then he fell, from the highest mountain that could ever exist. Down.

For some time he drifted in a soundless void, bobbing like a cork in a nameless sea. Paranoia overtook him, and for a time he was quite certain that he wasn't a real person at all, had never _been_ a person; he was instead a fiction created for the purpose of deceiving himself. In some bizarre way, he was taking part in the fabrication of his own labyrinth, and the sole glimpse he caught of its subtle and twisting design made him absolutely certain that he could never escape it, not in a million years.

Next came rain. It didn't fall on him—he didn't have a body, or did he?—but he could hear and smell it, almost taste its sweetness, and he pictured a telephone booth on a lonely Tokyo street outside neon-lit shops. Then, as if he had willed it into existence, he was standing in front of that telephone booth, his hand poised over the handle, smelling the wet grass scent of the rain, and he wanted to make a call.

 _Who_ did he want to call?

He had a list, he seemed to remember, an important list of calls that simply must be made. He reached into his coat and searched his pockets. They were empty, save for the inner pocket above his heart, the one with the silk lining and the fancy zipper—so he opened it, feeling like a passenger in his own body, and saw that the pocket contained a knife, with serrated edge and wood-handled grip. He blinked and looked at it more closely.

Did it have blood on it?

 _I have to find the list,_ he reminded himself, and then it was in his hand, a fine list written on yellow notebook paper, with names that ran down the page and never seemed to end. He chose a name at random.

Saburo Takao.

He took the receiver into his hand and dialed the number. It was long and seemed to go on for longer than phone numbers usually did, but he paid no mind to that. After the twentieth digit, he placed the list of numbers into his pocket and zipped it back up. Then he drummed his fingers on the chrome payphone case, studying his reflection in its warped metal finish. He was a pale contorted figure, with long gray teeth and glassy marble eyes.

He looked away.

The phone began to ring, but the ring seemed to come from between his ears, as though it came from inside his skull. He put the receiver down and blinked in surprise. The view of the street outside the telephone booth had vanished and been replaced by… nothing? He was surrounded by a sea of blackness. Curious, he opened the door of the booth and went outside, and then—

He became something like a photon with indigestion. He saw indescribable colors and seemed to travel like a lightning-bolt across and along the Cymatic Grid, an arrowhead of data trodding the well-worn paths of commerce and entertainment. One moment he was in Setagaya, overlooking a crowded shopping plaza, his head humming with peoples' overheard thoughts about lunch, sex, and gossip, and the next he was in the countryside, humming like an electrical transformer at a Hue check scanner near a small footbridge leading into forested trails. He traveled across Japan with alacrity, a fiber-optic speed demon, and it was only after several stops that he realized he was headed somewhere in particular.

Then the world flashed into darkness again, but just for a moment, because seconds later he _knew_ Saburo Takao. He knew him because he _was_ Saburo Takao. He looked through the man's myopic eyes and saw: a line of customers staring at him, irritation etched on every face, sweat glistening on every pore. He listened through the man's slightly deaf ears and heard: his own breathing, soft and usually unnoticed; the coughs and rustles of fabric as impatient customers muttered under their breath; the elderly pensioner standing before him like a dried-up cactus, lips pursed with dislike, threatening to call his manager for being _useless_ at his job…

"Yes," he heard himself saying, hesitantly, with a hand rising to touch his forehead, probing. "I apologize. I felt lightheaded for a moment there. Someone will be here to assist you shortly. Excuse me."

Takao turned away, giving Makishima a panning view of the interior of an ordinary Japanese bank branch. It looked like thousands of other banks, as if they all shared the same blueprints, or were designed by the same architect: tile floors interrupted periodically by squares of cheap gray carpet, brown imitation leather couches, tables holding brochures offering investment advice and bank services, and, pervading all, the stale indoor air of the early afternoon.

Takao walked down a small hallway in the back of the bank to a locked room, which he quickly unlocked with a key hanging from his belt and entered. Inside the room was a series of refreshments: armchair, coffee maker, and portable refrigerator with a small television on top of it. Saburo Takao sank into the armchair with a grateful sigh and massaged his temples.

"I nearly collapsed," Saburo murmured to himself. "That's odd. But I just ate lunch. Maybe a touch of food poisoning."

 _Hope I'm not getting diabetes. Dad was diagnosed with that… when? Forty-five? Impossible. I'm still thirty-eight. Never going to eat there again. Cook probaby doesn't wash his hands. Disgusting._

Makishima listened, a silent ghost, as Takao ruminated upon many possible causes for his attack of vertigo. He had a voluble mind, and entertained and dispensed with topics as diverse as the price of petrol in the outlying prefectures to the recent election results of the Japanese Diet in a span of time shorter than a quarter-hour.

 _He's in the wrong profession,_ Makishima thought. _How did he get placed into customer-service? He talks endless nonsense to himself. He should have been a writer._

As Takao flipped on a local news station and enjoyed the restorative effects of oatmeal and cold tea, Makishima discovered that he could, with difficulty, view some of the man's most recent memories. If he concentrated hard enough and thought of himself as Takao, the mind offered the memories up, but in a vaguely distorted way, as if seen through a pane of glass.

The bank teller had spent most of the last week out on sick leave—but he hadn't been sick. Instead, he had taken a weekend trip to Tokyo and gambled away large sums of the bank's money at illegal betting-houses. Then he had toured the city's aquariums and eaten at its finest restaurants, before retiring to a five-star hotel with an on-again-off-again girlfriend. And he was planning to do it all again the next month, or as soon as he could siphon enough money from the daily deposit vault.

 _I've seen enough. His current Crime Coefficient is 58. I'd say he deserves a cloudy Hue. Let's give him 89._

Makishima made the changes without quite knowing how. He double-checked his work by waiting until Takao finally left the break room and passed by a Hue check scanner in the bank lobby. When he returned to his window with dozens of shocked eyes locked upon him, Takao looked surprised, then puzzled. But when a manager came over to touch him on the arm and point out the fact that his Psycho-Pass was now steel gray…

If he had a body, Makishima would have given a sharp-toothed smile. But then he called up his Judgment List and saw that, while the name Saburo Takao had disappeared, the List had not diminished in any perceptible way.

There was still a few thousand _more_ people to judge.

* * *

"Is she coming through yet?"

" _I don't know._ The portal's not active. It lights up, doesn't it? That ring around the edge. It glows."

"Has she ever been late before?"

"How would I know something like that? _You're_ the one who makes a special study of her habits."

Shusei Kagari cajoled his facial muscles into an approximation of a smile (it came out looking somewhat more like a pained grimace, but hey, at least he made an effort) and surveyed his men. The antechamber of Castle Caneworth was a vast, breathtakingly craggy room with vaulted ceilings, fanciful iron sconces, huge archways, and a pervading odor of mold and moisture. It looked something like a dank, mildewed medieval fortress. The Awakening Portal sat upon a dais at the far end of the room, where Kagari and his lieutenant, Starvale, stood. His men, numbering thirty-five, were arrayed in a military phalanx facing the dais, their armor polished to a gleam so that the torchlight was caught and refracted every which way, as if the men were bedecked with gemstones. There was a tension in the air that made every breath seem to taste of anticipatory violence.

"You men know the drill," Kagari called out, hoping that what he said was true. If any of his squad leaders forgot their orders, or if their timing was off by even a few seconds, their plot held little chance of success. "The plan is a good one." He tried to think of something else to say, something more reassuring than _try not to fuck things up, okay?_ He thought back to old man Masaoka, who always knew the right remark to defuse a hot situation. He even tried to summon his inner Ginoza—an asshole, to be sure, but the man knew how to make a rainy day seem full of sunshine. He drew a blank. No matter what Starvale said, he wasn't a leader of men. He was just a lowly Enforcer thrust into a situation that required unflinching action—his specialty. "Remember to watch out for each other. And don't be afraid. She's dangerous, but she's not a god, she's not immortal, no matter what they try to tell you."

His pep talk seemed to have the opposite of its intended effect. Kagari saw his men glancing at each other and frowning, and heard doubtful whispers rise up. The precisely regimented ranks of soldiers shifted as if he'd said some offensive thing. The tension was on the cusp of the breaking point.

"Oh, screw it," Kagari muttered. "I tried." He lifted his longsword from its scabbard and peered at the edge, scrutinizing its killing side. A habit dating from his first experience with combat in the Sibyl System, when he'd been an unwilling participant in Lady Sawaki's annual Caneworth melee. He had been a new prisoner, just uploaded from the real world, with no idea where he was or what had happened to him. It had been like a dream. He'd managed to survive the crucial first month, but only because a fellow prisoner by the name of Starvale had taken pity on him and offered lessons in swordsmanship. Over time, their bond became a friendship that led to other prisoners gravitating toward their nucleus, and they won their share of battles in the grand melee, eventually earning a place for themselves as members of Lady Sawaki's personal guard.

That had been nearly a year ago. Kagari could scarcely credit it. Time seemed to pass in strange ways in the Sibyl System. A day might last what seemed a week; another, a handful of hours. It was disorienting to those who were unwilling to mentally adapt. Kagari theorized that time elapsed in irregular sequences, and at other times not at all, as if they were programs running on a laptop and their owner sometimes closed the lid on their existence.

Starvale nudged him. "Listen. Hear that?"

Kagari stood still. He tuned out the ordinary sounds of breathing, coughing, the rasp of chainmail, all of which were as real as life, and strained his ears and _listened_.

There was a very, very soft hum emanating from the Awakening Portal.

"That's her," said Kagari. The relief of knowing lasted only seconds; the reality of the Lady of Castle Caneworth soon standing before him _in the flesh_ made his heart jolt in his ribcage. He checked his longsword again.

He glanced at Starvale. The man was as pale and tight-eyed as Kagari felt. _That makes two of us._ What they were about to do was treason against the Sibyl System, punishable by death—the real death, meaning they disconnected the Nutrient Arms from your brain-jar and left you to perish without infusions of fresh blood. Death would come quickly.

"Relax," he said, and tried to take his own advice. He wet his lips with a dry lizard tongue. "She'll be here soon. We have to act normal. She'll suspect us."

"It won't work." Starvale closed his eyes and moaned. "She'll know. This was a foolish idea. Lady Sawaki controls the Authorship of the Dream, Shusei. This world conforms itself to her wishes. It will _come to her aid_."

"I know that," Kagari snapped. "But there's a loophole, you said. An opportunity. Kill her during that window and she dies for real. You said that."

Starvale laughed bleakly. "Did I say that? I'm a fool. Thirty seconds goes by so fast."

"Thirty seconds is a lifetime. It'll be long enough."

The hum that had been gathering volume at the edge of their hearing ceased. The Awakening Portal, a ring of stone about a foot in width and six feet in diameter—and looking a bit like a _Star Trek_ transporter, Kagari thought—disgorged Castle Caneworth's newest master after each six-month term. The Sibyl brain lucky enough to win the Recreation Lottery was quickly ensconced in their new home and, as the reigning Lord or Lady of Caneworth, could indulge in whatever pastime they desired. The term of Lord Waybrook had expired three days ago and he had departed for the Sibyl System proper to resume his judging duties. He'd been a decent sort—loud and obnoxious, in Kagari's opinion, but kind to the workers. Under his Authorship Caneworth had been a place of endless feasts, hunting and revelry.

Kagari should have known it wouldn't last.

He had only experienced three months of Lady Sawaki's Authorship, which had preceded Waybrook's, but that three months was enough to last a lifetime. But somehow she had won a second Lottery and would be back for another term.

She was beautiful and intelligent, but also bright and cruel, too. Her humor was of the sarcastic sort, but with an undercurrent of charisma that had towed Kagari along in her wake. For a fortnight he had believed himself to be in love. His feelings, she said, were reciprocated, and she elevated him to his present station as head of Caneworth's garrison. Their relationship had been tempestuous and unlike any he'd known—more like a tropical squall, really. It had come to a screeching halt when she ordered Kagari to kill an injured worker. He'd told her to fuck off.

She made him watch the execution. It was rather long and messy, but he remembered being proud for not throwing up. He didn't want to give her the satisfaction.

Evelyn Sawaki was one of the bad brains of the Sibyl System: defective, cruel, with an unmeasurable Crime Coefficient and a taste for killing. And in a few short minutes, she would appear in the Awakening Portal, an unwelcome vision, her brain once again linked to Caneworth and its residents. Come to think of it, she would be linked to Kagari too, and to Starvale and everybody else, for that was _how_ Caneworth worked—a sort of ad hoc neural network from which was generated their imaginary world. But therein lay the opportunity.

For a few seconds, as ancient code was executed on the Sibyl computers that functioned as intercessors between brains, she would _not_ have Authorship of the Dream. She would be like anyone else; a participant in the Dream, one among many.

An equal.

She would appear in the flesh, probably smiling, and perhaps she would even be glad to see him again.

And Kagari intended to smile right back—just before he killed her.

* * *

In the end, their fears proved to be unfounded. The killing was simple. Trivial, even. Lady Sawaki appeared in the Awakening Portal like a lovely vision in a period-accurate floral dress, her hair flowing down her back in gentle curls. Kagari went up to greet his liege and kissed the back of her hand. They shared a brief smile that hinted of greater things to come.

Then, returning her embrace, he drove a knife between her ribs. She died in his arms, an uncomprehending look on her face. She never saw it coming, which relieved him. He wasn't good at betrayal.

Afterward, his men tried to elect him Prime Minister of Caneworth—with some hazy idea, he supposed, of declaring independence from Sibyl and defending their new homeland with weapons scavenged from the castle armory. They didn't seem to understand, nor could Kagari figure out how to explain it adequately, that Caneworth was not a place in space and time that was defensible through physical means; that it was less _terra firma_ than an idea held briefly in the minds of the Sibyl mainframes for what was, in computer terms, a span much shorter than the average eyeblink.

The body they cremated in the castle ovens. Kagari didn't know what that act accomplished, but it seemed to fit the general atmosphere of revolution. He didn't—or couldn't—watch. Instead, he and Starvale broke open the lock on Lord Waybrook's wine cellar, where they found an astonishing collection of booze. The two repaired to the library, where Starvale read old books and tried not to notice Kagari weeping softly in the corner.

Daily life at Caneworth went on much as it had before. Perhaps it was because the Sibyl System had chosen exactly the right man for each job, but work continued in the vineyards and the olive groves, and despite the lapse in governance there was little in the way of discord between Caneworth's residents. Kagari was left nominally in charge, but killing Lady Sawaki had left him in a state approaching catatonia, and Starvale handled most issues in his place. For a while it seemed as if Caneworth would indeed go on as a self-sustaining entity, ignoring the past and trying its best not to think about the future.

That delusion was shattered on a morning that dawned with fierce spring rains—a message in itself, for Caneworth's weather was always beautifully tranquil—and the unmistakeable shriek of an air raid siren. It roused Kagari from a nightmare-plagued sleep, and he rolled to his feet with an easy grace that ended with him grasping instinctively for a nonexistent Dominator under his pillow. His eyes opened wide, then awareness flooded in. He stumbled over to the large window overlooking the gardens, and what he saw made his mouth fall open in disbelief.

High above Caneworth, written in the clouds by a brush the size of a jumbo jet, hung the following message:

ATTENTION CANEWORTH LATENT CRIMINALS. VIOLENCE COMMITTED SHALL BE ANSWERED. A DIVINITY HAS FALLEN, AND THOSE RESPONSIBLE SHALL BE BROUGHT TO JUSTICE.

And below that, in smaller cloud-script:

A NEW MASTER OF CANEWORTH WILL ARRIVE IN SEVEN DAYS. PREPARE FOR HIS ARRIVAL AND PRAY THAT HE IS MERCIFUL.

With that, the dream of Caneworth ended—and the nightmare began.


	3. Lazarus

Makishima adapted quickly to life in the Sibyl System. It was almost like a perpetual holiday—not a terribly inconvenient state of being, though he did wonder if he would feel differently a year, or decade, hence. They said that time ran oddly within the Sibyl System, in curious and unpredictable cycles, almost dreamlike in its measure. Would he one day wake up only to realize that a thousand years had elapsed, and he was a creature unrecognizable?

One day he decided to share his concerns with Masuda, with whom he had developed something like a friendship, while the two of them were sitting together in the library. (The Blue Astrocyte's library was Makishima's favorite place: it contained every book ever written in every language, and none were ever checked out.) Makishima sat with a biography of Alan Turing, a book in which he had become deeply immersed. The mathematician's life was an interesting tale, full of tragedy and pathos, but Makishima was far more intrigued by the man's theories about artificial intelligence, which seemed to him directly applicable to the problems affecting Japanese society. Masuda, meanwhile, was reading an American comic book, which he described to Makishima in glowing terms. Far from dismissing his fears, the other man received them with the utmost gravity.

"It's certainly possible. I, for instance, have changed in countless ways in the years I've spent as a Sibyl legislator. I never liked celery before—couldn't stand the taste of the stuff. But now I crave it. I have a celery _addiction_. It's quite unaccountable."

Makishima sighed.

Masuda leaned closer. "In fact, some of us have a theory."

"What is it?"

"It's not very scientific, it's just a hunch that's been making the rounds. It started when Kansuke carried out an experiment. He announced, in Mr Chambers' hearing, that he wished they would remove beef teriyaki from the restaurant menu, as he hated the taste of it. And what do you think happened?"

Makishima said that he didn't know what happened.

Masuda stabbed a finger against Makishima's breastbone. "The next day, Kansuke announced that he'd had a change of heart. He now _loved_ beef teriyaki. He thought it was the best dish ever created." He raised an eyebrow. "What do you think of that?"

"It sounds like Mr Chambers sent a message to Kansuke: shut up, or else."

"No, no. It was Kansuke's _palate_ that changed. He genuinely likes beef teriyaki now. I've seen him eat it—he can't get enough. Mr Chambers caused his desires to change. What does that suggest to you?"

It suggested many things, none of them pleasant. He put down his book. "It suggests that our brains are not simply wired into the Sibyl System. Something more is happening. Sibyl is changing _us,_ too."

"So now you understand why I don't dismiss your concerns. I don't think they go far enough, personally. A thousand years may pass, yes, and you may be older and wiser in superficial ways, but who cares about that?" Masuda sighed. "The real question is, _will you be Shogo Makishima at all?"_

 _Someone badly wanted me in the Sibyl System. They turned the whole MWPSB to the task of capturing me, alive, at all costs. Why?_ Makishima slowly rose to his feet and went over to the window. As he used to do in his penthouse while lost in thought, he studied the Tokyo skyline with unseeing eyes. It was an overcast day, and the gauzy haze of pollution lent the horizon a pleasing orange tint. _I thought it was because they wanted to use me as a weapon, but what if that isn't the case? What if they—Mr Chambers, or whoever controls him—don't want_ individuals _at all? What if they want something else?_

"You should read this," said Masuda. "I love comic books—better than any novel, if you ask me."

"I didn't ask you."

 _Have I changed already?_ He searched his feelings, but gave up a second later. How could you tell if the stuff that comprises _you_ has changed? Kansuke changed because he dared to challenge Mr Chambers. That suggested the best way to avoid having his personality scrambled—for now, anyway—would be to stay under Mr Chambers' radar for as long as possible.

"Of course, you won't have to worry about any of that soon enough." Masuda put his comic book back on the shelf and scratched his chin as he considered his next selection. "None of us will, I hope."

Makishima turned. "What do you mean by that?"

" _You_ know. The Okaba Street trials."

"Right." He knew it would be fruitless to ask the man to elaborate. Masuda seemed to think that Makishima was one of Yamato's close political allies, making him privy to inside information. Which might be true—he wasn't certain yet. Yamato, at this point, could be friend or foe or something in between.

One thing _was_ clear, though. The longer Makishima stayed in the Sibyl System, the longer he risked losing his identity and becoming the thing he hated most.

* * *

Later that day, after a pleasant afternoon spent swimming laps in the Olympic-sized pool, Makishima noticed something amiss on the way back to his apartment. The faces he passed in the hallways seemed distressed—some were grief-stricken, others looked stunned, and a few were openly weeping. _What tragedy could cause a god to cry?_ he wondered. Illness and death were half-remembered concepts in the Sibyl System, being too academic to cause true sorrow, and the misfortunes of their subjects in the real world were viewed with equanimous detachment.

In the elevator, Makishima saw more grieving faces. He recognized one of them from his first session in the Diet—she had been sitting next to Sawaki, he remembered—so he took the young woman aside and asked her what had happened.

"You don't know?" She blinked at him with tear-filled eyes. "It was announced over the PA."

"I was in the pool."

"Oh." She accepted a handkerchief that Makishima pressed into her hand and dabbed at the corners of her eyes. "It's Eve, she…"

Makishima's eyes narrowed. "Eve? Do you mean Evelyn? Evelyn Sawaki?"

The girl nodded. "The news just got back from Caneworth. They killed her. Those animals—they, they ambushed her. She's _dead_."

It was an absurd statement. Unless their brain-enclosures were breached, Sibyl gods were all but immortal—and if they _had_ been breached, Makishima would be dying too. He studied her more closely. Her eyes were red-rimmed, her hair a mess. But what jumped out at him was that she appeared genuinely distraught. _She knows people can't die in the Sibyl System, but here she is, bawling her eyes out._ He patted her on the shoulder.

"Was it the latent criminals?" he asked.

"Of course, who else? They must have been plotting since Hugh came back. How could they _dare?_ Don't they know what this means? Now we'll have to kill them all." She snorted back tears. "We have to send a message. To make them _learn._ "

"Maybe they don't care that you're going to kill them," said Makishima. "Maybe they would rather die as free men and women than live as slaves on somebody's vacation island."

The girl looked at him with an uncomprehending glassy-eyed stare, so Makishima offered his condolences again and continued on his way. It was becoming clear that the people in Sibyl were unpredictable, and he found that galling. He was the best student Professor Saiga had ever had; he could get nearly anybody to follow his cue, if he desired, and people were just one of the many tools in his toolbox. But three days in the Sibyl System still found him an observer of events rather than their orchestrator.

 _I'll have to speak with Yamato. He's the key to everything—him, and Mr Chambers._

Coincidentally, he found the man himself waiting in his apartment. Yamato was seated at his kitchen table, having invited himself inside and helped himself to Makishima's digital fruit. Or was the fruit real? He could never decide if the essence of it made a difference to its existence. A cantaloupe was sliced open messily in front of the Vice Chairman. He looked up when Makishima entered.

"Ah, there you are." Yamato used a rag to wipe his hands and gestured at the fruit. "Would you like some?"

"No, thank you."

"I let myself in," said Yamato. "I hope you don't mind. You've heard the news, I expect?"

"About Evelyn Sawaki?" Makishima nodded. "It doesn't make any sense to me, though. I take it she isn't _actually_ dead?"

"Not in the traditional sense, the sense you're referring to. She _will_ die in a few days, if nothing is done."

"I don't understand."

Yamato pushed the cutting board away and rested his arms on the counter. Deep circles ringed his eyes, and there was an unspoken weariness to his manner. _He looks overworked._ "It's impossible to die in the Blue Astrocyte. It would take a real world catastrophe for such a thing to happen, and we've taken many precautions against that eventuality. Nona Tower is defended against any conceivable attack or natural disaster. We filter our air and, if necessary, can make our own. We have our own water source, separate from the Tokyo municipal supply. We generate our own power. We are an island of stability in a dangerous world."

"It sounds like Heaven is well-defended."

"It is. Physical death is nearly impossible, you see. But _brain death?_ " Yamato shook his head slowly. "That is an altogether more realistic possibility. To demonstrate, I'll need to briefly explain how the Sibyl System actually functions."

Makishima lowered himself onto the kitchen stool opposite Yamato. "I'm all ears, Yamato-san."

"Your brain cannot survive without your body. Sounds obvious, right? Well, think of the tremendous strides made in the field of microsurgery in the last century. We transplanted anything and everything. Tissue rejection was a thing of the past, a sad memory of the older practitioners. We succeeded in whole-body transplants even before the recent advances in cyberization, and even those first experimental cases lived long, healthy lives. But bodies are in exceedingly short supply, of course. In that case, before cyberization, why didn't we simply remove the brain and let it survive in the same kind of nutrient bath that _your_ brain is in at this precise moment? Wouldn't that solve the issue?

" _No_. Because we realized that the brain—the mind—does not need nutrients alone. It doesn't need blood or oxygen. Those are trivial to supply. It needs _input_ above all else. Input is what matters. The brain must have sensory input to generate a coherent sense of itself—to generate _you,_ in fact. Without sight, sound, touch, smell, you would quickly lose your mind."

Yamato turned the cantaloupe over. He tapped the outer skin. "This is Sibyl. While it does contain supercomputer elements and some human-written software, what it really is, Makishima, is an artificial corpus callosum. Are you familiar with that term?"

"I believe it connects the two halves of the brain, unifying them into one whole," said Makishima. "There were neurosurgical experiments and several breakthroughs after it was severed."

"Precisely. Here, in the Blue Astrocyte, we experience each other's presences via the medium of Sibyl. The same is not true of Caneworth. Because it wasn't designed by the original architect—"

"You mean Mr Chambers."

"Yes." Yamato hesitated. "And you still haven't met him yet. I apologize. He really isn't as mysterious as he seems."

"I'm sure Mr Chambers is a busy man. I'm happy to wait until he has time in his schedule."

"Very good." Yamato popped another slice of cantaloupe into his mouth. "As I was saying, at first Mr Chambers was reluctant to allow the creation of a second environment for Sibyl's members. He finally gave in under the agreement that it would involve no physical hardware—in other words, none of the existing Sibyl architecture would be employed in its creation."

"Its designers, Evelyn Sawaki and Hiroki Masuda, came up with an ingenious workaround for this problem. Instead of using Sibyl hardware as an intermediary, they chose to link each brain directly to every other brain. As I understand it, they called it a _peer-to-peer system,_ an idea of Mr Masuda's."

"I think I understand now. Without the Sibyl computers keeping everything nice and friendly, there is the possibility of real violence and brain death. If someone wanted to kill Miss Sawaki, she would die in the real world."

"Well, yes and no. Mr Masuda did anticipate the risks, so he gave one brain control over the rest. That brain is the winner of the Lottery, of course, and the person who has absolute control over reality itself in Caneworth. Mr Masuda refers to that state as the Dream."

"Then what happened? How did she die?"

"I spoke to Hiroki this morning, after the news reached us. He believes that there was one possibility—a thirty-second handshake period at the start of the Dream in which _no_ brain has priority. For those thirty seconds, anyone could kill Evelyn and face no consequences."

"Very clever of them to figure it out," said Makishima.

Yamato grunted. "Clever enough that they've signed their own death warrants."

"Death is not the worst fate, Vice Chairman."

Yamato shook his head. "I've no interest in arguing that old topic. Suffice it to say that none of them will survive the month."

Makishima slid off the stool and stretched. "Well, I feel very sorry for them, but they did roll the dice. We have a Diet session in a few minutes. Would you like to walk down together?"

"I came here to speak with you privately before the session, actually."

"Oh? About what?"

Yamato seemed to be turning something over in his head. He said something under his breath, then looked up at Makishima. "I'm hesitant to ask this of you. I know Mr Chambers would disapprove, and that alone would be enough for me to throw out the idea. But Evelyn is dear to me… She's a good friend. I would hate to lose her."

"You know of some way to save her life?"

"Yes. It would be risky for anyone, but since your brain has been linked to Sibyl recently, less so for you. As I explained earlier, the Recreation Node requires a direct brain-to-brain interface. Presently the Node is one brain short. Evelyn has been cut off from all sensory input—I imagine that she's extremely distressed right now, lost in a sea of what _we_ can only imagine as silent darkness. It would be a thousand times worse in reality. And there is no way of reconnecting her to Sibyl without killing her. But there _is_ a way to save her life. She need only be reconnected to Caneworth."

"That sounds deceptively simple."

Yamato chuckled. "Quite so. Saving her life will require her mind to genuinely believe that what she experienced in the Dream—her death—was exactly that: a _dream_. That alone will allow her to reconnect to Caneworth."

"You said before that Caneworth is a peer-to-peer system. That means everyone in it, including the latent criminals, must believe in the same shared world."

"Yes."

Makishima spread his hands. "Well, they all think she's dead."

"True." Yamato sighed and rubbed his jaw. "To save Evelyn's life, you would need to go to Caneworth as its next Lord. You'll bring with you a piece of code that Masuda will write for you. It will probably look like a sword or scepter—he's big on symbols. Once there, you will execute Masuda's code, which will give you full control over the Dream. You will kill the latent criminals and bring Evelyn back at precisely the same instant. When her mind realizes that there is no one there to contradict her existence, she'll rationalize her memory into something believable. Then you can both return to Sibyl. Of course, it will be mentally taxing for both of you. Caneworth will need to be generated by two brains alone—a difficult task. But I have faith in you."

"Suppose I get murdered during the first thirty seconds, just like her?"

"That bug has been patched by Masuda. Your Authorship of the Dream will begin immediately."

 _This is either a very clever trap or exactly what it seems to be. His feelings for Sawaki appear genuine enough, however._ Makishima looked at the clock hanging above the sink. Their Diet session was less than ten minutes away. "This piece of code that Masuda wrote. Can he make it look like a Dominator?"

Yamato blinked. He appeared to wonder if Makishima was joking, then shrugged as if it made no difference anyway. "Yes, I don't see why not. It can be anything. Is there a reason you'd like it to be a Dominator?"

 _I want to understand what it felt like for Kogami,_ he thought, but he saw no reason to tell Yamato that. _I want to see what being Sibyl's instrument of destruction will do to my soul._

"No," he said.

"Yes, well, certainly. I'll inform Masuda. Does that mean you'll go?"

It was a great risk, but it was also a correspondingly large opportunity. Mr Chambers would have no jurisdiction in the Dream, and that made the place highly appealing to Makishima. And if the worst happened and Sawaki really did die, he could simply spend six months as the Lord of Caneworth. Not the worst type of vacation.

"Yes."

"Excellent. We'll announce it in today's session." Yamato checked his watch. "Which, by the way, is just about now. I'll meet you down there."

After Yamato left, Makishima took a quick shower. He stood under the scalding water with his face upturned and his eyes closed, letting the heat wash away all fear and hesitation. He thought of Shinya Kogami's relentless spirit and pictured himself taking some of that ferocity for himself, borrowing from the soul of his murderer.

In his fancy, it fit together perfectly with his own soul, and in this way he knew that they were true mortal enemies.

* * *

On the sixth day after the cloud-script announced the date of Armageddon, Kagari awoke from a drunken sleep and began to shiver. He was lying next to Lady Sawaki's old bed, the stone floor icy beneath his body, blankets and sheets surrounding him in a great big mound. There were several empty bottles on the bureau, nestled in his blankets, and scattered about the floor. He had a tremendous headache, and his back was sore. His mouth tasted of whiskey and vomit.

He'd intended to drink himself into a stupor, such that the obliteration of Caneworth would pass by like a gentle breeze, barely noticed in his inebriated state. But he'd miscalculated the dosage and woken up early.

Kagari sat up. He looked around the bedroom with bloodshot eyes. He was alone, though he vaguely recalled having spent the night with one of the serving maids.

"Starvale," he called out hoarsely.

The door was shut, and nobody seemed to hear him. Kagari dragged himself along the floor to the bureau, which he used as a sort of climbing wall, clinging to each drawer with the helpless tenacity of a waterlogged rat. When he was sufficiently vertical, he staggered over to the door and opened it.

He peered into the hallway.

A uniformed guardsman stood at the end of the hall. Kagari thought his name might be Buckley. Buckley looked at Kagari with something like contempt.

"Where's Starvale?" he called out.

"In the war room, preparing for the attack," said the guardsman, and his tone seemed to add, _Which is where you should be, you drunk fool._

Kagari sneered at the guardsman and nearly lost his balance. He kept his footing only by bracing himself quickly against the doorframe, as if Caneworth were a sinking ship and he was readying for the final plunge into the ocean depths.

"Tell Starvale," he said, swallowing around his nausea, "I'll be right there."

The guardsman shook his head and walked off.

Kagari watched him go, then turned and surveyed the path to the bathroom. He was going to have a cold shower and then he was going to the war room, where the latent criminals of Caneworth were planning an ambush for the Sibyl brain that would be arriving tomorrow.

How could you ambush a god, though, he wondered? It had worked with Sawaki, but only because her divinity was incomplete—a coding error of sorts. But the next god to arrive would be an improved model, with all the bells and whistles, and ready to mete out divine justice.

 _They want to kill us,_ he thought. _That's fine. But they're not going to do it without an explanation. I deserve an explanation._

* * *

They gave Makishima a holster for Hiroki's computer program, which, as promised, looked exactly like a standard PSB-issued Dominator. He slid it from the holster and held it in both hands curiously, letting the light play over the barrel, his eyes narrow with concentration. Kurou Yamato and Hiroki Masuda and a fellow called Naoka—who supervised the link between the Sibyl System and Caneworth, and who looked perpetually confused—were all watching him. He ignored them.

The Dominator was cold to the touch, which surprised him, because whenever he'd touched Kogami—especially during their fight on the top of Nona Tower, an especially crisp memory for him—he'd felt as if he could be burned by the Enforcer's flesh. He'd imagined that the Dominators were filled with intense energies, and radiated great heat and light along with their customary death and paralysis. But, at least here, in the Sibyl System, that was not the case. The Dominator shone darkly in the orange glow of the Awakening Portal, which itself cast reddish shadows over their faces, as if they were lit by firelight.

"You understand what you must do?" Yamato inquired.

"You must bring Evelyn back alive," Masuda put in, his face a lined mask of worry. "Please, Shogo. Bring her back."

Makishima nodded. "When I go through that Portal, I'll awaken in Caneworth. Once there, I'll use Hiroki's program—" he lifted the Dominator, which still rested in his hand with a comfortable weight "—which will bring Sawaki back to Caneworth and kill all of the latent criminals. This will convince Sawaki's subconscious mind that she's still alive, and that what she experienced was just a dream."

"You may need to calm her," said the man called Naoka. "We don't know what sort of shape she'll be in. No Sibyl member has ever experienced brain death before. These are uncharted waters."

"I'll be very kind to her," he assured them, and stepped up to the Portal.

It was a large circle, and connected by a thick data-cable to a humming bank of computers taking up much of the wall. This room was a small one, just off of the Stadium, and it seemed to be where much of the administration of the Sibyl organism took place. The moan and whine of the computers corresponded to the flickering intensity of the light that emanated from the Portal. When Makishima stepped into it, the machines clattered into life, and a printout ejected from a nearby workstation.

Naoka went swiftly over to it. He read the sheet over with a look of great discernment and smiled. "It worked." And to Makishima, he added, "The Nutrient Arms have accepted your request for transfer. That means your brain will be disconnected from Sibyl and hooked up to Caneworth momentarily."

Makishima felt a tingle course through his body. He tightened his grip on the Dominator and ran his finger over the patterned grip. "How long will that take?"

Naoka consulted the banks of computer screens. They gibbered out madness in the form of text, babbled reams of information that might have been sense or insanity, or both. Makishima thought of Choe, his negotiator betwen the machine and the human world, and closed his eyes. "It shouldn't be long now. You will be disconnected shortly. You'll lose consciousness, but only for a few moments, and when you awaken, you'll be in Caneworth."

"Remember to keep hold of that program," Yamato urged, and his voice seemed to come from a distance. It was tinny and soft. "If anyone gets hold of it, _they'll_ control the Dream, not you."

"All right," said Makishima, and placed the gun back in its holster. He blinked several times in an attempt to moisten his eyelids. "Who turned out the lights?"

"No one did." To Naoka: "Is it beginning?"

"I'm checking, Vice Chairman." The sound of typing. A louder hum. "Yes, they're disconnecting him now."

"Good luck, Shogo."

He tried to respond, but the night, a great screaming mouth, swallowed him whole.

* * *

It wasn't like Makishima's first crossing into the Sibyl mystery. Then, awareness had stopped and started with the suddenness of a rollercoaster cresting dips and rises on a great adventurous track. The Portal took sight and hearing away piecemeal, with the other senses firing off randomly, as though his body had lost its sense of what was reality, what was imagination. He felt water washing over his skin, and then a murmuring in his ears—he couldn't recognize the words—before his eyesight faded to black. His thoughts went, too, and then his speech, and then he was just a mass of confused, frightened emotions.

Then that, too, faded away, leaving nothing behind but a sense of regret.

* * *

The Castle Caneworth war room was a hive of disturbed excitement when Kagari, feeling like an interloper, crept inside. They had taken over the biggest of the dining halls, and the large wooden table served as their strategy map. Knives and forks were plunged into the wood in symbolic representation of squads, barricades, cannon. During Kagari's slumber, the castle had been transformed into a warren of booby-traps and confused dead ends. All paths led to and from the Awakening Portal, which was surrounded by barriers of iron spike and chicken wire mesh that had been borrowed from the hatchery. Anything to render violence upon intruders that _could_ be done _had_ been done—but it wouldn't be enough, Kagari knew, not nearly enough.

"Shusei." Starvale looked at him from the end of the big table, grand and larger-than-life in his pilfered royal clothes. A silver pin gleamed on his lapel, proclaiming him as the head of the Caneworth household guard. His cheeks were embellished by the addition of five days' worth of whiskers. His gaze was steady and confident.

"Hey, everyone." Kagari went around the table, feeling the eyes on him, and came to stand beside Starvale's chair. _His_ chair, really, but he didn't want it back. He wasn't a leader. He'd meant what he said before.

The other man looked at him impassively. "I'm sorry, but things have changed, Shusei. I've taken over command. You were… unresponsive."

Kagari ran a hand through his hair and smiled weakly. "That's fine. I don't want command. I just want one thing."

One of the guardsmen snorted and muttered a soft insult, and laughter rippled through the assembled men and women. Most of the soldiers were gazing at him unpleasantly, with degrees of antipathy that ranged from dislike to outright hostility.

"What is it, Shusei?" Starvale asked.

"It looks like from all of this stuff—" and he nodded to the table, with its maps and strategies laid out like a Christmas ham and sides "—that you guys intend to kill whoever Sibyl sends tomorrow. I'm fine with that. I just want one favor."

This led to a few objections, and shouts rose up to drown out Kagari and envelope the dining hall in noise. Starvale waited patiently until it had expended itself and raised a calming hand. Silence fell.

"What favor, Shusei?"

"I want you to let me talk to the Sibyl member that comes through the Portal," said Kagari. "Whoever it is, I just want a chance to speak with them first, before the fighting starts."

"Whoever appears will kill the first latent criminal they lay eyes on."

"I know," said Kagari. "I don't care. I just want to speak to them."

Starvale looked steadily into his eyes, as if trying to divine his motive. Kagari didn't flinch. _Don't you understand?_ he thought. _If I'm going to die at the hands of Sibyl, I damn well want to know who's pulling the trigger this time._

Starvale shifted. He looked down at the cutlery festooning the table, then back up at Kagari. "Fine," he said slowly. "You can go talk to them. It will help us, in a way. We'll see if they intend to make good on their threat."

"Thanks."

"Is that all?"

"Yeah. I'll let you get on with your plans."

A small part of Kagari's mind traitorously whispered in his ear: _You can reason with whoever they send. If you ask for forgiveness, they'll let you live. Would that be so bad?_

He left the hall.

* * *

Makishima was reconstituted in the same manner as vegetable soup. The pot—his skull—was filled with water; then sliced potatoes, carrots, onions, and leeks were liberally thrown inside, along with salt, sugar, many different herbs and spices, and a can of chicken stock. These ingredients, combined by vigorous mixing, were put on the fire to simmer for an hour.

That was what it felt like, at least.

 _It's a wonder anyone wants to come here,_ he thought.

His body congealed into physical existence like jello poured into a mold, and he took a few seconds to steady himself, his fingers clutching a piece of wire grating. He took slow breaths and inhaled deeply. The fragrance of Caneworth was that of grass, sweat, leather, mildew, and char. He found it unpleasant.

"What an awful vacation spot," he said aloud, and slid open the screen protecting the Awakening Portal.

Or he _tried_ to. The mesh didn't budge. Frowning, Makishima pushed it, pulled it, and tried to move it to both sides. It was solidly fixed into place. He turned in a circle, saw the heavy ironwork barricading him inside the Portal, and realized what it was supposed to be: a fence to keep him out.

He began to laugh.

* * *

Kagari crouched behind an overturned table a dozen feet in front of the Awakening Portal and waited. He was the only one who dared come this close—the soldiers of Caneworth, with Starvale's prudent blessing, had taken up strongly defensible positions behind false walls and hidden trapdoors which had been ingeniously hewn into the very stonework of the castle. Most of the soldiers wore what heavy armor and equipment the garrison could supply; the rest made do with makeshift axes and wooden shields. Cannon towed on rolling carts and arrows and boiling pitch stood by, ready to fling death at Sibyl's messenger. The latent criminals of Caneworth didn't seem to understand their predicament—that this was all imaginary, in their heads, and there was nothing they could possibly do to stave off the inevitable. But Kagari couldn't blame them. They were frightened and ready to lash out like cornered animals.

The mind fights to survive even in the face of no hope.

Kagari was wearing jeans. He didn't have a weapon. He _wasn't_ afraid.

Fear had seemed logical before, when death was poking around the neighborhood, so to speak, but there was a salutary effect in seeing it up close. And it helped that he knew for a fact that dying wouldn't hurt—he had died once before, at the hands of Chief Kasei, and it had been nothing more than instant oblivion, like falling asleep, with perhaps a touch of warmth on his cheeks. Probably from the Decomposer round, whose energy traveled faster than the nerve impulses from his pain receptors. A reassuring thought.

The minutes passed with the languor of dripping honey. Kagari's legs began to cramp up, so he shifted into a half-crouch and massaged them to bring sensation back. As he did so, he failed to notice a reddish glow coming from the Awakening Portal, and more importantly, the slight hum that was growing from the stone ring. The Portal flickered several times like a faulty light bulb, and the pressure in the room suddenly changed, causing Kagari's ears to pop as a new body appeared, displacing the air surrounding it.

 _There. Much better._ Kagari sat back with a sigh just as soft mocking laughter drifted from the Awakening Portal. Every muscle in his body froze up again, and he hunched down, trying in vain to conceal himself. _Oh, shit. They're here._

The iron bars and the chicken mesh clanked as someone seized hold and shook them. He heard the welds being tested; the god jostled the grate, kicked it a few times, and ran his fingernails over the bars. Then he began to laugh again, louder this time.

"Is this meant to keep me out?" a voice called, highly amused. It echoed in the stone chamber and seemed to reverberate through every crevice of Caneworth. Kagari crouched lower behind the upturned table, trying to fold in on himself like a collapsible umbrella.

"Who is that?" the voice asked. "I can _see_ you there, you know. Your hair is sticking out."

Kagari swore and ducked. But the damage was done, and he sagged in defeat. What was the point in hiding any longer? He should at least die with dignity, right? For a few seconds he debated that question, feeling his courage run, falter, and flow anew beneath his skin. Finally his spine stiffened and he gritted his teeth.

He climbed coolly to his feet, brushing sawdust from his jeans, and straightened to stare the god in the eyes. Let him see that Kagari wasn't afraid, even in the face of the real death.

But the effect, sadly, was ruined. Kagari's eyes widened in disbelief and betrayed his attempt at coolness. He stared at the god in shock.

It was impossible, but he was looking at a face he instantly recognized from a photograph that Sasayama had carried around like a good luck charm—a face that had been enlarged, enhanced, and digitized before being sent to every precinct in Japan as the top name on the Public Safety Bureau's Most Wanted list of criminals. It was a face Shinya Kogami had spent hours memorizing after Sasayama's death; then he, too, had carried it around like a religious token, its surface worn smooth from constant handling. Kagari couldn't have forgotten that face if he'd wanted to, even if he'd paid a hundred million yen for a total brain-wipe.

It was the face of Shogo Makishima, of course.

* * *

"I recognize you," said Japan's most notorious criminal mastermind, as calmly as if they had bumped into each other at the supermarket. "Give me a moment to remember from where." His eye skimmed over Kagari's stunned face, questing, lightly touching mouth, nose, ears, and lingering on his bright red hair. "I know—you're _Kagari,_ aren't you? You're one of the MWPSB's Enforcers. You were in the cellphone recording that Chief Kasei showed me, the one Choe took before they killed him."

A transformation came over Makishima's face. He blinked and looked momentarily excited, then stared at Kagari with great urgency. "You're alive. Does that mean Choe is alive, too? Is he here somewhere?" He peered around the chamber as if expecting to see Choe Gu-sung waltz out from behind one of the shadowed columns.

Mutely, Kagari shook his head. He didn't know what the man was talking about. It seemed that every time someone threw him a curve ball, it stopped in mid-air in front of his glove and changed direction. What was _Shogo Makishima_ doing in the Sibyl System? Hadn't they worked for months in an effort to capture him? Kagari's mind raced, eliminating possibilities one by one, circling back on discarded theories like a dog chasing its own tail.

Then it dawned on him. _Capture Makishima alive at all costs._ Division One had received memos like that repeatedly over the course of the investigation, always couched in terms that exaggerated Makishima's importance as a living asset. His colleagues had ignored them, in truth, knowing that sometimes in their line of work people died—an unfortunate reality. But he finally understood _why_ it had been sent in the first place. In retrospect it seemed glaringly obvious: the Sibyl System had never _wanted_ Makishima to die at all. They had wanted to invite him into the System as an honored guest.

"He's dead, then?"

Kagari stirred himself. Everything had clicked together in his head in a way that signified total understanding, like a set of locking gears lining up in perfect synchronicity, and he finally understood the Ministry of Welfare's unceasing flow of nonsensical and contradictory orders. They all made sense when he viewed them from Sibyl's perspective, from a desire to safeguard Makishima's life.

 _We weren't sent out to capture Shogo Makishima so that he could face justice. We were sent to ensure his immortality._

"Well? Is Choe Gu-sung alive?"

Kagari shook his head slowly. "I doubt it. Not unless the Sibyl System can reverse a Dominator's effects. I saw Chief Kasei—or whatever Sibyl brain was piloting her body, I guess—shoot him at point-blank range with a Decomposer round. There's no way he could survive that, unless he's got more tricks up his sleeve than I gave him credit for."

Makishima rested a hand against the barricade and stared at Kagari. "A pity," was all he said.

"So you're the new Lord of Caneworth," said Kagari, not liking the silence growing between them. "I'll be honest—when I was trying to guess who they would send, your name wasn't exactly at the top of my list."

Makishima sighed. "Becoming a pickled brain in the Sibyl cupboard was not my fondest ambition, I admit."

"I didn't even know you were still alive," Kagari continued. "I figured Kogami would have gotten you in the end. He was driven enough to get the job done."

"He nearly did. It was only Sibyl's quick action that kept me from bleeding to death."

"If you don't mind my asking, what happened?" Kagari scratched his head. "I've been trapped here since the night you attacked Nona Tower. I'm in the dark about everything."

The god swept his eyes over the dining hall, taking in the various defensive barriers, the overturned tables, the cannon trained on the spot where he stood, and smiled slightly. "I suppose it can't hurt to tell you. My plan was to take out Sibyl and free mankind from its unnatural captivity. Barring that, we would at least try to broadcast its true nature to the people of Japan. We failed, obviously. I was captured by the PSB, who turned me over to Sibyl. You already know what happened to Choe." Makishima's eyes clouded over for a few seconds. "I managed to escape. Then—and this was something I wasn't expecting—Shinya Kogami shot me in the back and left me for dead in a hyper oat field. The Sibyl brains then airlifted me to Nona Tower, where I was given the keys to the kingdom, so to speak."

Kagari snorted. "Lucky you."

Makishima shrugged. "It's not the kind of afterlife I was expecting, but it does have its perks. On the other hand, I am not quite the reformed man that dear Sibyl believes me to be. I confess to have been biding my time, waiting for the right opportunity to present itself." He peered closely at Kagari. "And do you know? I believe it has."

"What's _that_ supposed to mean?"

Ignoring him, Makishima asked, "Do you know why I'm here?"

"Yeah, we got the message. We killed Sawaki and you're here for revenge."

"That's why _Sibyl_ sent me here, but as I said, I have my own plans. I certainly never expected to meet an Enforcer from the Public Safety Bureau here, let alone one who has a history with myself and Choe Gu-sung."

The feeling that death was mere seconds away from seizing Kagari by the throat lessened, and he leaned against the overturned table, feeling sensation slowly return to his limbs, a tingle that crept like a centipede's feet over his skin. "What are you saying? You're not going to kill us?"

"I'm open to negotiation, Enforcer, if you're willing to bargain for your life."

 _What is he talking about? How is he going to explain letting us live to the Sibyl System? They won't settle for anything less than blood. On the other hand, he_ is _Shogo Makishima, the guy that even Kogami had difficulty tracking down. He must have some trick up his sleeve._

"I come from a long line of hagglers," said Kagari, a grin spreading across his face. "I'm all ears, Makishima."

"Very good. I'd like to discuss matters in a more private setting. Would you ask your friends to remove these bars?" He gave the iron cage a hard shake. "Or, if you would prefer, I can take them down myself."

"No, let me talk to them," said Kagari quickly. "They'll be glad to hear you didn't come here to kill anyone."

Convincing Starvale and the others to let a Sibyl god free in Caneworth wasn't easy, however. They seemed to think that Makishima had Kagari under his spell and was somehow forcing him to do Sibyl's bidding. Another theory, espoused by those who especially disliked Kagari, went that he was betraying them all in exchange for his own life. After much back-and-forth, Kagari managed to convince Starvale that he was trustworthy. They opened a narrow corridor from the Awakening Portal to Lady Sawaki's chambers. Starvale, looking ill under the weight of his plate armor, led Kagari and Makishima there in strained silence.

"I'm glad you're being reasonable, my lord," Starvale began when they reached the chamber entrance, but Makishima raised a hand and cut him off.

"I want to speak with Kagari, not you. The fate of everyone in Caneworth rests in his hands. If he chooses, you will all live long, happy lives in digital bliss. Or you may all be dead by nightfall. Understand?"

Starvale's eyes grew progressively wider and more terrified as the god spoke, and Kagari swung the door shut with an apologetic wince.

* * *

Lady Sawaki's bedchamber was as he had left it—mess and all.

It was a surreal setting for a parley between god and subject, Kagari thought. He saw the large bed in the center of the room, overflowing with silk sheets and sable blankets, and for a moment he was overtaken by memories of Evelyn. But then Makishima strode past his field of vision and rudely jolted him from his reverie.

"You look overwhelmed," the god said. "Get yourself a drink."

Kagari poured them each a glass of water from the drinks tray, then went over to sit at the breakfast table. "We're alone," he said, and sipped at his water. "What did you want to ask me?"

"I want you to help me destroy the Sibyl System."

Kagari flapped his jaws for a few moments. Then, aware of how he must look, he gave a quick nod. "Of course." It might not have been the absolute _last_ thing he expected to hear from a Sibyl member, but it was the next closest thing. "Was this always your plan? Get recruited into Sibyl and take it down from the inside? If so, let me just say that it was very impressive planning."

Makishima wandered over to the large bookshelf and peered at the titles there. "No," he said over his shoulder. "We had no idea what the Sibyl System truly was. We thought it was simply what had been advertised: networked supercomputers of unprecedented speed, programmed in such a way as to maximize societal happiness and well-being. Choe had his own suspicions, some of which he shared with me." He selected a book and began to flip through the pages. "In hindsight, I wish I had paid more attention to his theories."

"We didn't know either," said Kagari. "The MWPSB, I mean. And you know what? I don't know what we would have done if the truth _had_ come out. Ginoza and the other division chiefs would probably try to put the best face on it, say it was for the good of the country or something. But the rest of us?" He stared at his glass of water. "Yayoi might have quit. Masaoka, too. Hell, I _know_ Kogami would have gone on a total rampage."

Makishima looked up from his book. "You were close friends with Shinya Kogami, then?"

 _That's a weird question._ Kagari frowned. "Yeah, we were pretty close. We'd go out drinking together. I'd say he was a friend."

"What was he like?" Makishima spoke without inflection. His eyes bored into Kagari's face.

 _Whoa, what made him get so intense all of a sudden?_ Kagari ran his finger through the puddle of condensation on the table and shrugged. "Kogami was a complicated guy. You never knew whether he would laugh his head off or _take_ your head off. He was a bundle of contradictions—kind to animals and children, cruel as hell to latent criminals. I saw him break a guy's ribs once just to get his Crime Coefficient to spike. There was a _reason_ he was kicked down to Enforcer, you know."

"He was a worthy opponent, to be sure." Makishima weighed the book thoughtfully in his hands. Kagari squinted, trying to make out the title. _Selected Poems._ He couldn't see the author's name. "I would have liked to spend a few hours in conversation with him. As it was, our brief encounters left me deeply impressed."

"Oh, I think you two would have gotten along fine."

Makishima shot him a questioning look.

Kagari nodded to the book. "He read poetry, too."

The god didn't say anything to that, just kept staring down at the book thoughtfully, so Kagari tried to bring the conversation back around to the main issue—his life. Well, the lives of everyone in Caneworth.

"You said you wanted me to help you take down Sibyl." Kagari spread his hands. "Hell, you came to the right place."

"You're willing, then?" asked Makishima. "It will be dangerous. I can't guarantee your safety."

Kagari nodded with a confidence he didn't feel. "A little danger comes with the job. But how dangerous are we talking, exactly?"

"I don't know. I'm trusting in Choe Gu-sung." Makishima approached the breakfast table and sat down opposite Kagari, who found the nearness of the deity vaguely discomfiting. He wanted to scoot his chair back a few centimeters, but didn't dare for fear of giving offense. Seen up close, Shogo Makishima was quietly intimidating, his face calm and unnerving in the way it studied your every move and expression. It was like being recorded by a machine, Kagari thought—or like a Hue check scanner.

"What do you mean? Choe Gu-sung is dead."

"Before our attack on Nona Tower, we made contingency plans. In the event that one of us was incapacitated or killed, the other was to go to a prearranged address in the Warehouse District of Tokyo."

"That's the automated district, isn't it? Humans aren't allowed to go there. It's mostly factories."

"Correct," the god replied. "That very remoteness made it particularly well-suited for our purposes. We leased a disused factory from a firm that went bankrupt six years ago. Choe rigged up that space as our headquarters, so to speak."

Kagari gave a low whistle. "So _that's_ why we couldn't find your base of operations. We were using the Cymatic scanners and the Hue check cameras to find you, but there are no cameras or scanners in the automated district. It's supposed to be tightly regulated for human access."

"Yes, well, never believe everything you hear."

"I'll try to remember that. Anyway, what does your old HQ have to do with taking down Sibyl?"

Makishima examined his glass of water carefully. He lifted it and peered at each bubble, sniffed it, and ran his thumb around the edge of the glass. "Amazing, isn't it?" he asked Kagari. "So convincing a replica of a real glass of water, yet entirely unreal. Just a figment dreamt up by my slumbering brain. The mind behind Sibyl was truly brilliant."

Kagari looked at his own glass of water. "It's pretty real, all right. Tastes like water."

"Choe told me that if he died during the attack on Nona Tower, I should return to our warehouse and type a certain command into one of his computers. He didn't say what would happen when I did so, only that it would be a great help. That's what I need you to do for me, Enforcer Kagari."

"How do you expect me to do that?" Kagari asked. "I'm a jar-brain just like you. I don't have a body. I can't just walk over to the train station and buy a ticket to the Warehouse District, can I?"

"Have you ever heard of the Internet?"

Kagari frowned. "Yeah, in school, I think. It was an old-time network, had something to do with telephones, right?"

Makishima sighed. "It was the world's first global communications network. It grew out of the telegraph/telephone system and later became the blueprint for what would grow to become the Cymatic Grid, although the Grid would be based on different technologies. It fell into rapid disuse in the middle part of the 21st century. Today, all of Japan's communications are done wirelessly or through quantum cabling, and under the sanction of Sibyl."

"Okay," said Kagari. "What does this have to do with me walking around in a body again?"

The god crossed his arms and tilted his head thoughtfully. He regarded Kagari as if measuring his dimensions, calculating if he would fit in a shipping crate or something. "I said that you would help me by going to our headquarters in the Warehouse District. I didn't say _how_ you would get there."

Kagari's stomach began to fall. "How, then?" he demanded.

"I've done a lot of reading since being invited into the System, and with the help of Hiroki Masuda, a Sibyl programmer, we've adapted some of the older technical ideas underpinning the Internet and some of the newer ones developed for Sibyl into a new specification."

Kagari looked up at him blankly.

Makishima sighed. "He wrote code that will hook your brain up to the old Internet the same way that Sibyl brains communicate with the Cymatic Grid. From there, you'll be able to bypass the Grid's security system and travel directly to the Warehouse District."

There was a brief pause as Kagari digested this idea.

"Are you sure that's possible? A moment ago you said the Internet was some historical relic, and now you're saying I'm going to go beaming across it like some CommuField star on the Grid? Does it even exist? Who maintains it?"

"Yes. These days it is mainly used for infrastructure which wouldn't be cost-effective to upgrade—power plants, water treatment facilities, that sort of thing. And according to Masuda, a Sibyl consciousness _should_ be capable of traveling across it."

Kagari closed his eyes. "But you're not totally certain it'll work."

"No."

"It could be fatal."

"May I point out that your body is already dead? But to answer your question, yes."

"And do I have a choice in the matter?"

Makishima made an amused sound. "Do you _think_ you do?"

Kagari sighed. "That's what I was afraid of. And once I'm there, what happens?"

"Simply carry out your mission and then return the way you came."

" _Then_ what?"

"I'll set you free."

 _Lying son of a bitch._ Kagari nodded.

"Let's go over the specifics. There are several security systems in our HQ that you'll need to disable before you can access Choe's computers. I know all of the important passwords."

Kagari listened like he used to during Ginoza's briefings—with careful attention. Despite what Yayoi claimed, he really did know how to focus when something truly important was being discussed, and this sure counted as _that_. What Shogo Makishima was saying would dictate whether he lived or died, and he really didn't want to die. There was so much left to live for.

* * *

"You'll tell everyone I went back to Sibyl, like we agreed? And you'll let them live?"

"Of course."

Kagari nodded. "Fine. Then I'm ready."

Makishima pulled the Dominator gently out of its holster and cupped it in both hands. Surrounded by the ancient majesty of Caneworth, it looked like a thing out of another world—sleek, machine-crafted, deadly. He pointed it briefly at Kagari, who blanched and recoiled, then smiled and pointed it at the floor. When he depressed the trigger, the Dominator fired, but not with any Paralyzer or Decomposer round. It made a sound like crackling firewood and created, in a small depression in the floor, a ring similar in size and construction to the Awakening Portal, but somehow different.

"That should do it," he said, looking from Kagari to the humming ring rising out of the stone floor. "When you step inside, you'll be sent past the gatekeepers that keep the Sibyl pantheon locked up. You'll be funneled through a fiber-optic cable that was owned by a telecommunications company at the turn of the century. It's still intact and should function well enough, but it's rarely used by anyone these days, which works to our advantage."

"They won't be able to tell I'm there?"

"Their safeguards are meant to prevent humans from accessing the network, not Sibyl-privileged data. With the proper credentials, you'll be allowed straight through the firewalls. To them, you'll appear to be just like any other official Sibyl transmission."

Kagari nodded, but he didn't feel terribly confident, even with Makishima's assurances. He moved closer to the ring. It seemed to glisten like a sheen of oil lying atop a surface of filthy water.

Makishima holstered the Dominator and went to stand next to Kagari. "You aren't afraid, are you?"

"No, of course not," he said slowly, then paused. "Actually, yeah, I am. I'm about to go through some ancient telephone wire, aren't I?"

"Fair enough. But what are _you,_ really?" The god tapped Kagari on the chest. "Just a series of self-propagating electrical impulses."

"That doesn't make me feel better. What if I don't wake up?"

Makishima shrugged.

"Well, I guess this is goodbye. I'll say hi to Choe for you if I see him."

With that, Kagari stepped into the ring, stood a moment in apprehensive silence, and then disintegrated into his constituent elements, which themselves floated away on the Caneworth breeze. A moment later and Makishima stood thoughtfully alone.

"Goodbye, Shusei," the god said into the empty room, before turning on his heel to complete his mission.

* * *

Upon returning to the Awakening Portal, Makishima was greeted by the assembled forces of Caneworth standing in front of the Portal. The man called Starvale stood at their head. Evidently they believed that he intended to leave without fulfilling their agreement. _Clever of them._ Makishima smiled. _But they don't have the faintest idea._

"You've conducted your business with Kagari, then?" Starvale called, voice firm despite the pallor of his face.

"I have," Makishima replied.

"And you came to an agreement with him concerning our fate." Starvale eyed him warily. "That we should be allowed to live here, away from Sibyl, in return for his services to you. That is what he promised us."

"That is what we agreed to, yes."

"And do you intend to keep to that agreement?"

"No."

Makishima unholstered the Dominator and held it before the torchlight. He studied the play of firelight across the machined barrel and shook his head slowly. "A thing of beauty," he remarked to the stunned prisoners of Caneworth.

Starvale stepped forward, face ashen, body trembling, and shook an accusing finger at Makishima. "You _agreed_ —"

"I lied," said Makishima pleasantly. "Now, are you all here? That's everyone in Caneworth? Seems to be the case. Wonderful. We'll get this over with quickly."

They attacked him, but it was useless—Makishima scarcely noticed, and for all the good their phantasmal weapons did them, they may as well have been wielding foam swords. He stood unperturbed in a bubble of still air; spears, cannonballs, and arrows rained down upon him but could not penetrate that protective sphere. Makishima bent his head over the Dominator and adjusted the settings, twisted knobs, punched buttons, until the gun let out a startled chime and changed its shape into something he'd only seen once before—in the hands of Shinya Kogami.

It was a Dominator in Destroy-Decomposer mode, and it was frightening. Makishima studied it like a museum patron critiquing a masterwork of art, fascinated, before raising the barrel toward his attackers. He murmured, "Multiple targets, simultaneous," and received a glow from the gun in reply. He slid his finger in front of the trigger.

Then he fired.

The Dominator gave off a terrific blue radiance, like sapphire phosphorescing, and sent a few hundred tiny crystals flying across the room at incredible speed. Each crystal found its mark—each latent criminal of Caneworth lay dead or dying a second later, their blood pouring down in rivulets to the stone foundations of the castle.

A moment after that, Shogo Makishima depressed the trigger again, beginning the second part of the program's sequence. The Awakening Portal began to glow, surrounded as it was by mounds of bodies, and the outline of a woman began to sketch itself into the space within the ring. The sketch became by degrees more detailed, filling in muscle, sinew, bone, and flesh and blood, until Evelyn Sawaki stood before him, motionless, blinking as if she had just walked out into the bright light of a stage and, catastrophically, had forgotten her lines.

Makishima went over to her.

"Miss Sawaki," he said gently. He waved a hand in front of her face; her eyes tracked it, but remained dull and sightless. He took her by the arm, led her from the ring and to a wooden chair that had miraculously remained upright during the chaos. With the former Lady of Caneworth seated, he turned to the bodies strewn like misshapen lumps upon the ground, bodies lying upon bodies, and, exercising his Authorship of the Dream, vanished them with a wave of the Dominator. He turned back just in time to hear the woman speak his name.

"Makishima."

"Yes. I'm here." He knelt before her, gazed into her clouded eyes, and brushed a tangle of dark hair from her face. "Are you yourself again, Evelyn?"

 _She is quite pretty, isn't she?_ Makishima remained on one knee and didn't object as, bizarrely, Sawaki began to stroke his cheek and repeat his name, senselessly at first, later with greater emphasis and meaning. His name rang through all the empty corridors of the empty castle, a name that found no listening ears save for his own. When the echoes at last fell silent, Evelyn Sawaki was gazing at him with something like adoration.

" _Shogo,_ " she said.

"Yes."

"You _saved_ me."

"Certainly not. It was a programming error, Evelyn. You were only gone for a few moments. You must have dreamt something. What did you dream?"

Her head fell back, and she gazed at the arched ceiling in wonder. "You saved me," she mumbled again.

Sighing, Makishima climbed to his feet and, bending over, slung the woman over his shoulder. He carried her to the Awakening Portal, from which they both departed like a faintly dissipating mist.

Then, with no one there to imagine it into existence, Caneworth itself vanished.

* * *

To travel the fiber-optic cables of Japan as disembodied data, Kagari found, was like being a narcoleptic with a short fuse traveling the Shinkansen. While en route to the next node on the old Internet, Kagari was only vaguely aware of his surroundings, conscious, but existing in a sleepy state of half-life. Whenever he reached his destination, however, his mind seemed to momentarily reboot, which was almost exactly like the groggy feeling of waking up on a Saturday morning after sleeping in too late. He had control over his trajectory only during those brief stops, unfortunately, and it wasn't as if Japan's ancient Internet had been based on a sensible grid system like most major cities—it went everywhere, in branching paths that resembled the nervous system of some great animal. Kagari couldn't plug in the address for the Warehouse District and let a car drop him off a half-hour later. No, he had to use trial and error: overshooting by hundreds of miles, then shooting back along an express cable designed for military alerts, then, having gone too far, doubling back in the other direction.

It was slow progress, that was for sure.

And it didn't help that some parts of the Internet led... nowhere. It really was a relic, having been superseded decades ago by its more capable cousin the Cymatic Grid. Several times he went down seemingly operative paths and ended up inside a barely-functional mainframe, nearly sucked into a cascade of memory errors like a swimmer trapped in a whirlpool, powerless to escape.

After what seemed subjectively like a couple of hours, but really was probably closer to a few minutes at most, Kagari found himself in a promising spot: parked smack-dab on a computer system belonging to the Northeastern Power Corporation of Japan, which, fortuitously enough, offered an internal help system for employees. There were no longer any humans involved in repairing the electrical grid, of course, but due to a clerical oversight somebody had left this useful program running, so Kagari took advantage of it.

Without knowing quite how he did it, he managed to call up a map of transformers in the region. Then it was simply a matter of looking for the region code of the Warehouse District.

 _Perfect._

Seconds later, Kagari was on his way to Makishima's old headquarters.


	4. Reunion

Makishima's headquarters was perfectly disguised. A nondescript industrial building that looked as if it had last seen use sometime in the 2060s, the warehouse wore the years like a tattered old coat. Even Kogami on his best day wouldn't have looked twice at the place.

 _We never would have thought to look here,_ Kagari thought.

The MWPSB was nothing if not rule-bound; when uncertainties arose in investigations, the right thing to do was always to consult the _Officer's Handbook,_ a slim red volume that looked like a book of poetry and contained hard-copy guidelines for over four hundred potential policing scenarios. What to do if a criminal obtains Tactical Unit cloaking gear (never happened before, at least not during Kagari's time on the force)—how to respond if a member of the public inquires about illegal activity (bring them in for questioning)—the precise level of force to use during a hostage crisis when the hostage is not a Level 3 Public Figure of Note (the decision is left to the discretion of the responding officer)... The _Handbook_ was consulted by rookies and old-timers alike with a fidelity rivaling that of religious devotion.

An Inspector like Ginoza was always flipping through his copy, underlining passages, highlighting others, taking it into the john with him... In Kagari's view, that rigid, hidebound, calcified way of policework had been partially responsible for the introduction of his kind in the first place. When a detective got soft in the head, like Ginoza after Kogami's fall from grace, they brought in Japan's most effective and versatile piece of crime-fighting equipment: the Enforcers.

In a world where one's Psycho-Pass was highly scrutinized, Kagari thought, it was easier to let tame criminals deal with other criminals. That left the Inspectors and the upper brass of the PSB with clean hands and untroubled thoughts.

 _But I don't think the Handbook has anything about_ this _kind of place._

As he surveyed the run-down Shoju Industrial Manufacturing Center, as the nameplate still read in tarnished bronze lettering, even Kagari had to admit that the Enforcers probably wouldn't have figured _this_ to be Shogo Makishima's base of operations. It accorded almost too well to a criminal stereotype, like something out of an old turn-of-the-century television cyberthriller. The underworld boss's dark lair on the sleazy side of town, complete with shattered windows, broken streetlights, and feral dogs wandering the district.

Inside, though, Kagari found the warehouse to be surprisingly clean, even aseptic. The concrete floor had been power washed to get all the oil and diesel stains out—only a few remained. The rusted girders arching overhead like a great ribcage had been painted a pleasant dark green and now called to mind the leafy fronds of a jungle, and the big skylights had been restored with new smart panels, enabling weather of any sort to be piped down from above. Right now, it seemed to be raining outside, but Kagari knew it was actually a calm, cloudless night.

Most of the warehouse was empty space. There were a few vehicles parked at the far end—a regular Honda Transport Mk. II, its hydrogen cells lying disassembled on the floor next to it; a battered courier's motorcycle resting on its kickstand with a pink helmet slung over the handlebars; and a Toyota Executive sedan, complete with little Rising Sun flags attached to each headlamp. _Looks like they had political ambitions, too._

Kagari flowed—that was the word that seemed to best fit his new method of traveling—from a security camera's fisheye lens attached to one of the steel girders to a smaller zoom lens by the one corner of the warehouse that had been renovated for human habitation. The concrete abruptly gave way to stiff office carpeting, and a row of cubicles made an L shape around a big holographic monitor. To either side of the monitor were computers, the left one rather smaller than the other and in multiple pieces. The right one, though, even Kagari recognized as something special.

A sleek black cube, it was connected to the holographic display through a standard power-data cable, a keyboard and mouse, and a VR headset that Kagari, in his presently disembodied state, couldn't hope to use. Instead, he did what came naturally to him as a wisp of electronic thought—he jumped from the security camera to the quantum cable connecting the cube to the Grid outside. Then, as if he were knocking on somebody's front door, he reached out and tried the knob.

Big mistake.

Without quite knowing how it happened, Kagari found himself in great pain, huddled inside a nearby piece of networking equipment. His body—or whatever made up _him_ —felt as if it had been bruised all over and given two black eyes. He sat there for some time, probably fifteen minutes, cursing out Choe Gu-sung and moaning in agony.

Then, the pain having subsided a bit, he tried again... _this_ time remembering to first recite the password Makishima had given him.

The barrier melted away, and Kagari slid inside, his body buffeted by the rapid flow of information inside the computer, a sensation that was akin to a kayaker trying to ride down a waterfall—he was falling too fast to react. Then something nearby brushed his body, like an outcropping of rock, and he reached out and clung to it desperately.

It was while he was catching his breath that he sensed a presence fall over him, almost like the shadow of someone standing above him. Then he heard a voice.

Choe Gu-sung's voice.

"Need a hand?"

Kagari closed his eyes and reached out blindly. A hand engulfed his wrist and pulled him up with effortless strength, and the roar of the imagined waterfall ceased. When he dared to open his eyes, he saw that he was standing in a simple office, not unlike the makeshift office in the corner of the warehouse that he'd just left. And standing in front of him, smiling broadly, was the hacker known as Makishima's right hand man.

Gu-sung looked just as he had in life—perhaps a bit less tired than his PSB mugshot suggested. There were no deep circles under his eyes, and his face wasn't quite as sallow as Kagari remembered. He was wearing the same clothes that he'd worn during the disastrous attack on Nona Tower: low-slung jeans, blue windbreaker, and wrap-around headphones.

"Don't say too much all at once," said Gu-sung, with an amused smile.

Wordlessly, Kagari shook his head. _Does no one actually die any more?_ It seemed as if the afterlife was etched in silicon.

"You can sit, if you like." Gu-sung inclined his head toward a swivel chair in front of a table that held immense stacks of computer print-out. He rounded the desk, a mirror of the one in the warehouse, and sat down with a sigh. The chair's wheels squeaked under his weight. "While you regain the ability to speak, I have just a few tasks to finish, here. Then I'll be ready to leave."

"Leave?" Kagari blurted. Part of him wanted to say, _But I just got here!_ and another part, _Where are we going?_

Gu-sung looked up with a raised eyebrow. "Yes, of course. By your presence here am I correct in assuming that our attack on the Tower failed? And that Makishima survived? And that he's sent you to ask for my aid?" He frowned. "That was the entire purpose of constructing this place, and _me_ , for that matter..."

"Yes, he survived. Well, kind of." Kagari paused. "It's just—how are you still alive? I saw Chief Kasei blow your head off at point-blank range with a Dominator. How are you still here?"

"Isn't it obvious? I'm _not_ the Choe Gu-sung you knew in the real world. I'm a copy of him—Choe Gu-sung 2.0, if you like. New and improved."

"Right..."

"Rather like yourself, eh?"

Kagari bristled. The hacker's words hit close to home. He'd been nursing secret doubts about _what_ he was ever since he'd let Sibyl upload him into the cloud, and now Choe seemed to be speaking aloud his inner thoughts. "I have a brain," he retorted, too quickly, too defensively. "I'm not like you."

"Of course not, said one artificial entity to another," Gu-sung murmured, then raised his hands in surrender. "Fine. Have it your way. You are a delightfully real human being, temporarily deprived of your birthright of flesh and blood. I am a foul, silicon-spawned computer program."

"You _are_ foul," Kagari said under his breath, rubbing his arm. "What was the deal with that wall I hit earlier? It feels like I was run over by a truck."

Gu-sung smiled. "Oh, that. The firewall. It's quite advanced—I added the ability for it to cause subjective pain sensations to any potential sentient programs or AIs. I'm glad it's finally been proven to work. Though I always knew it would, of course."

Kagari scowled.

"Is Shogo well?"

"Oh, he's wonderful. He's very happy in his new position as Sibyl's head psychopath. He feels right at home."

Gu-sung's fingers ceased typing. He looked up and stared at Kagari, his expression grave. "Go on."

"He needs your help to bring Sibyl down from the inside. That's why he sent me here."

The hacker's features relaxed, and his fingers sprang back into a blur of movement. "I'd suspected as much. You know, this whole setback might have been for the best. To attack an entrenched enemy is always difficult, at least according to our friend Sun Tzu. But if the enemy invites you into his home of his own free will, and what's more, gives you your own key?" Gu-sung shook his head. "We should have planned it this way from the start."

Kagari went over to the other swivel chair and sat. He examined a few of the papers on the big table, but they were all written in binary and to his untrained eye seemed like so much gibberish. He turned in slow circles and studied the office decor with a smirk. "This is where you live?" he asked. "Looks a little out of character for the MWPSB's _Second_ Most Wanted."

"It's the place I spend most of my time," Gu-sung replied. "A recreation of my office at home. I may be a copy of a real man, but I am a high-fidelity copy—I share more than 99.999% of the neural architecture of my originator. So for all intents and purposes, I _am_ Choe Gu-sung. What he likes, I like."

Kagari nodded. He took a deep breath, then sighed. "For what it's worth, Choe, you died well. Nearly took out Chief Kasei, too. I was impressed. Not bad at all for a computer geek."

Gu-sung grinned. "Did I? How close was it?"

"If you were a half-second faster, you would have sent a nail right through Kasei's eye."

The hacker rolled his head back and sighed. "Damn, that would have been so satisfying. I guess it's good that I made the attempt, at least."

"What are you doing now?" Kagari nodded to the holo-screen.

"Checking for vulnerabilities." A moment later, he added, "Well, I'm packaging up the vulnerabilities I already _have_ found, actually. You see, Choe created me shortly before he went off with Shogo on his mission. His instructions were to essentially wait until my help was needed, but I've never been one to sit around doing nothing. I'd imagine you understand that feeling. I've got a class-2 Grid connection, a fast computer, and plenty of free time. Why not do what I do best?"

"And what have you found?"

"Oh, lots. I've been poking and prodding at the Nona Tower firewalls, looking for any changes in strength or state due to the emergency protocols that were put in place during the attack. And guess what I discovered? When the MWPSB declares an automated city-wide state of emergency, there's a port intended for emergency communication that will accept unsigned connections for a period of eight minutes. Some programmer wrote this code decades ago and missed the error, and since real emergencies are so infrequently declared, they haven't had a chance to see it in action."

Kagari smiled. "And you're going to give them that chance."

" _We_ are." Gu-sung typed a final flurry of commands, then crossed his arms and regarded Kagari with a squint. "That is, unless you aren't up for it?"

"What, and let you and Makishima screw up a second time?" He shook his head. "I wouldn't miss this for the world."

 _This time they won't see it coming,_ he thought. _This time we'll succeed._

* * *

The memo appeared on her notification screen seconds after she flipped on her computer. Written in the terse, peremptory tone that she recognized from Sibyl—or from the brain that happened to be currently piloting Chief Kasei around like some morbid puppet—the memo was suitably cryptic, which she'd come to expect from her masters: _Your presence is required in the Garden. Come now._

"I'm going to have a sit-down with the Chief," Akane said, and shuffled her papers to one side of her desk, leaving a semblance of order. "Ginoza, you're in charge until Mr Arishima gets here." _At least I remembered his name this time._

Her former superior looked up from the orgy of paperwork that he exulted in each morning. His glasses slid down his nose from the abrupt motion, causing him to look less like an Enforcer and more like a librarian. "What does she want?"

Akane didn't bother answering until she had gathered up her coat and umbrella and finished shutting down her computer. Then she gave Ginoza a quiet stare designed to subtly inform him, without causing undue embarrassment in front of Kunizuka, that he was acting inappropriately—acting, in fact, like an equal. Like an Inspector of the Public Safety Bureau. A job title that he'd not possessed for quite some time.

Unfortunately, he didn't seem to get the message, or didn't _want_ to get it. He simply raised his eyebrows and kept staring at her.

Akane sighed. "Nobuchika, do I make a habit of telling the Bureau's _property_ what I plan to do each day? Do I inform the coffeemaker in the break room of my itinerary? Have you seen me having long chats with the copy machine in the hallway?" His face grew even more inscrutable, if that was possible. "You're not an Inspector any more, Nobuchika. It's high time you remembered that. What are you?"

Kunizuka glanced between them out of the corner of her eye, then wisely returned her attention to her holo-screen. Akane was in no mood for a general mutiny. _They've got to learn that I'm not the rookie I was last year. I'm going to take charge of this division, just like Ginoza did during the hunt for Makishima._

"I'm an Enforcer, Inspector Tsunemori," Ginoza replied, then added ironically, "Just one of the MWPSB's trained hunting dogs."

 _How many times did he give that speech to new Enforcers?_ Akane thought with no small amount of sadness. _And now look at him. A Crime Coefficient of 145._ "That's right." She softened her voice. "Try to remember that, Ginoza, all right?"

With a last look at her subordinates—they looked exhausted, and soul-weary, the same way that Akane felt—she waved her ID card at the exit scanner and left Division One's offices. The Garden that Chief Kasei had referred to in her memo could only mean one thing: the huge brain-farm at the heart of Nona Tower where Akane's ignorance about the nature of Japanese society had been shattered forever. If that was her destination, she would need access to the service elevators, since the regular elevators only went as low as the ground floor.

She made her way across Nona Tower's campus, which was a pleasant, tree-lined outdoor space that had somehow been engineered to grow unhindered in a skyscraper. She'd seen some of the hydroponics work being done before, and it was impressive—there were full-spectrum lights mimicking sunlight, humidity control equipment in the walls, and even a fertilizer system tended by small wheeled gardeners that sped underfoot like excited dogs. Nona Tower was unlike any skyscraper from the pre-Sibyl era—stuffy, metallic, and full of dead odors. The MWPSB's headquarters was a bright and cheerful sunscape that brought to mind the tranquility of a beach paradise. The floors were like a series of condensed photographic slides of nature scenes, stacked one upon another, stretching high into Tokyo's skyline. It truly was an idyllic place. After graduating from university, she'd felt immensely lucky to be allowed the privilege of working there.

But now...

She wished, sometimes, that she could go back to the way it had been before. Go back and forget all the inconvenient things she'd learned, the lies and deceptions and grand designs. Just scrub away the knowledge that Sibyl, the glorious System that every schoolchild grew up trusting, the System that she'd written her thesis on, was a fraud. A painfully ordinary human fraud.

 _I just wish I wasn't the only one who knew,_ she thought. _I wish I could confide in someone..._

She had thought of telling Shion or Yayoi about the Sibyl System, but something always held her back. It was, perhaps, the suspicion that such knowledge could only be entrusted with a certain kind of person. Someone like Kagari. _Dead and buried._ Or Kogami. _Probably working in America by now._ It was a secret that she had to keep safe for the sake of the millions of innocent Japanese people living their lives with a false sense of security.

Akane stopped at an access hatch, looked both ways, then unlocked it and ducked inside. It was a vertical drop of some thirty feet, which she descended by ladder. When she reached the bottom, she took the left tunnel, the one that led to the service elevators. The other tunnel led to the loading docks.

There was no waiting around for an elevator. The Sibyl System must have been watching her, because the elevator doors opened by themselves as she approached, and when she stepped inside the doors closed. The elevator began to descend. _They could intend to kill me,_ Akane thought, too late, as the elevator dropped into Sibyl's netherworld. _It would be an accident. A malfunction in the brakes. Sudden deceleration. An easy way of solving a problem._

But despite her premonition, the elevator slowed normally as it neared the unlisted basement level of Nona Tower. When it reached the lowest floor, the doors slid open and a voice intoned from above: _"Please exit and continue to the Garden, Miss Tsunemori."_

"Thank you," Akane replied.

The Garden was the same awe-inspiring sight it had been before. A vast field of yellow fluid, interrupted only by vats containing individual Sibyl brains, each brain connected to its neighbors, each neighbor connected in like fashion to _its_ neighbors in a great branching network, an ever-growing lattice. The doors closed behind her like interlocking dominos as she stepped inside, her eyes glued to the wonder—to the horror—of Sibyl.

 _It's beautiful,_ she thought.

 _"Akane Tsunemori."_

She nodded. "I'm here."

 _"We know,"_ said a voice from somewhere to her left.

 _"Our eyes are everywhere, Miss Tsunemori,"_ said another voice, this time from her right. _"They see many things."_

Akane had a sudden mental image of the compound eyes of an insect, huge and glassy, like tiny water balloons—and pictured herself stepping on that bug. Crushing it under her shoe, grinding its chitinous skeleton into reddish paste. She smiled.

 _"We have seen you carry out your duties faithfully, in accordance with our collaborative relationship. This pleases us."_

"Well, I'm glad you're pleased," said Akane sarcastically. "That's the most important thing to me."

Ignoring her remarks, Sibyl continued. It was yet another voice this time, one that had not spoken before. _"Some members of our System do not trust you, Miss Tsunemori. Yet others believe in you."_ There was a brief silence, as if the hundreds of brains were conferring with each other, or perhaps arguing. _"Since your performance was invaluable in the capture of Shogo Makishima, we have decided to rely upon your aid again. This is a high honor."_

"What is it this time?" Akane asked. "You've got Makishima, just like you wanted. His allies are either dead or on the run. What else could you possibly want?"

 _"You might call it 'tying up loose ends.' We have not forgotten that Shinya Kogami remains at large, having first played a crucial role in the capture of Shogo Makishima."_

Akane stepped forward, flushing. "Wait, you're going to keep looking for Kogami? After all he's done for you? You wouldn't have gotten Makishima if it wasn't for his efforts! He almost died!"

 _"We are aware of that, Inspector. Shinya Kogami completed his function with admirable skill. He will be commended before prosecution."_ There was a pause, and then another voice, a deeper one, took over. _"But exceptions cannot be made for any individual citizen. In a perfect system, the rules must be applied impartially. Shinya Kogami will be judged."_

 _I'm glad you left, Kogami,_ Akane thought. _I hated you for leaving, but now I know that you made the best decision for everyone. We couldn't afford to lose another friend. Not after Kagari._

"It's a good thing he left Japan, then," Akane said sweetly. "You'll never find Kogami. He's too good for the likes of you."

She hoped that he was happy, wherever he was—probably in Hong Kong, working as a constable, or perhaps he'd even crossed the ocean and gone to America. If the wars there had died down, maybe their society could use a good policeman. She hoped so, anyway.

 _"That is an incorrect assertion. We have found Shinya Kogami."_

Akane felt the color drain from her face. She opened her mouth to argue, but knew it would be useless—the Sibyl System wouldn't lie.

 _"We require your help in bringing him to justice, Akane Tsunemori."_

"Where?" she whispered.

 _"A Cymatic scanner identified a man fitting Shinya Kogami's parameters two weeks ago in the coastal town of Akita. Further attempts at verifying his identity have been inconclusive, yet certain of our members are convinced that it is indeed Shinya Kogami. Observe."_

A tiny drone detached from the ceiling and flew down to hover like a bumblebee in front of Akane's face. It projected a holographic recording of a seedy dockside alley. Sailors at liberty as their ships were unloaded of cargo walked arm-in-arm, singing bawdy drinking songs, while pickpockets and prostitutes mingled under dim streetlights. The scene was straight out of the old century, before the Sibyl System—and, with a sinking feeling, Akane thought that it was precisely the kind of locale where Kogami would choose to go to ground.

 _"The man fitting Shinya Kogami's description has been working in the so-called black market as a bodyguard for a local crime lord called Lor Sam Pau, a man wanted by the Sibyl System on several dozen charges of fraud, theft, assault, and murder."_

"Kogami would never murder anyone," Akane said softly. "He wouldn't."

 _"Your supposition may be correct—however, it is immaterial to our investigation. As an accessory to crimes committed in the Japanese homeland and under the mandate of the Sibyl System, Shinya Kogami must stand trial in order for justice to be served. As the Senior Inspector of CID Division One, you have been selected to plan and execute the raid to capture Shinya Kogami."_

"I won't do it."

Was it her imagination, or did this new voice have a mocking lilt to it? _"On the contrary, Akane Tsunemori, you will. Your devotion to the principles of justice are sufficient to outweigh even your affection and infatuation with Shinya Kogami."_

Akane spluttered. " _Infatuation?_ I'm not in love with him! He's my friend!"

 _"We have observed that your heart rate increases markedly when in Shinya Kogami's presence. In addition, your pupils dilate and your sexual hormones—"_

"That's enough!" Akane said loudly. "I don't have to stand here and listen to this."

Above her head, a robotic arm rolled along a lubricated track before dipping down to attach grippers to a brain-vat. Once secure, the arm lifted the vat from the yellow fluid, almost like a fisherman lifting his catch from a flaxen ocean. The brain was carried into a small opening that appeared in the far wall of the Garden, which closed after receiving it.

 _I won't help them, Kogami. I won't let you follow Kagari into the grave._

 _"Will you carry out your orders, Inspector Tsunemori?"_

She stiffened her shoulders and looked as defiant as she could. "No."

 _"Very well. Your refusal has been noted. However, since there is a high probability that you will change your mind, please be aware that you can notify Chief Kasei of your acceptance of this mission at any time within the next two days. If you refuse to conduct the raid, the responsibility will fall to Inspector Arishima."_

"The rookie?" Akane demanded, incredulous. "You can't be serious! He just graduated from the Academy! He doesn't know one end of his Dominator from the other."

 _"Nevertheless, we calculate that Inspector Arishima will follow orders. He may be less capable than you, but perfection is not required from our human instruments."_

"You wouldn't know perfection if it came up and bit you on the ass."

 _"The Sibyl System is perfection, Inspector."_

"More like perfect insanity," Akane said under her breath.

 _"This squabbling is counterproductive. You have been informed of your mission. Have a nice day."_

Behind her, the shifting squares formed an opening the size and shape of a doorway. The message was clear: get out.

Akane turned on her heel and left the Garden. The brains' nutrient broth sent a yellow glow over her shoulder, illuminating the interior of the elevator. She went inside and let it carry her upwards, toward sanity.

 _I won't do it, Kogami. I promise._

* * *

It was nearly six o'clock when she returned from her meeting with Sibyl, well past the time when the officers of Division One should have been wrapping up their day's work, shutting down their computers and loading their briefcases for the train ride to whatever homes and apartments awaited them. But despite the hour, nobody had made a move. Work continued unabated. Heads bent over desks. Fingers clacked on keyboard keys. Coffee was sipped.

The reason was simple enough. The Inspector of the Division hadn't left yet. What employee would dare to leave his office when his boss was still working less than ten feet away? No employee, that's who.

Akane almost felt sorry for them—almost. She knew what was waiting for her back at her apartment... Hours of worrying about Kogami, lessened only by sedatives and a few hours spent wandering the CommuField in search of something to divert her anxious mind. _Oh, Kogami, why weren't you more careful? Why didn't you leave Japan when you had the chance?_

For a moment, Akane considered going home. But she could already hear Candy's remonstrances about the importance of a good night's sleep on an Inspector's Psycho-Pass and career, and she couldn't deal with that kind of mothering right now. She needed distraction. She needed _work_.

Putting her bag down next to her chair, she asked Kunizuka to repeat what she'd said. Something about electrical disturbances in the Cymatic Grid. Unusual.

Kunizuka looked up from her monitor. "It's nothing much, Inspector. Just an odd overload in the Cymatic Grid station nearest to the Warehouse District. Sanitation and Public Works doesn't want to investigate it. According to them, it's a Public Safety Bureau issue."

Akane put down her coffee mug and frowned. "Why do they say that?"

"Because while it's technically related to the power grid, the actual glitch is in part of the Cymatic Grid, which is the PSB's remit." Kunizuka's glasses caught her reflection in the monitor's screen.

"The Ministry of Welfare's remit, you mean," Akane prompted.

"Of which we, as officers of the Public Safety Bureau, are a part, strictly speaking." Kunizuka looked curiously at Akane. "I don't see the distinction."

Akane toyed with her mug. She pushed it backwards and forwards on her desk, destroying the perfectly circular coffee stain that had built up over eight hours of the workday. "Well, I know that. I just meant that we're the PSB, a different part of the Ministry of Welfare. That's all."

There was an awkward silence. Akane saw her subordinates exchange puzzled glances, then felt her own cheeks grow warm. Since learning the truth about the Sibyl System, she'd felt obligated to distance herself—and her officers and their Enforcers—from the Ministry of Welfare in whatever way she could. It felt like the right thing to do.

She agreed, in principle, with the Sibyl System's goals, and her working relationship with the brain collective had been... cordial, until now. But as time passed, her knowledge of the Sibyl System seemed to grow inside herself, to metastasize, becoming a painful lesion in her head. It hounded her conscience. She went to work each day as a faithful Senior Inspector of the MWPSB, but she was aware of a rebellious streak rising in her stomach.

And now, with the Sibyl System going after Kogami—going after _her_ Kogami—she felt hopeless, powerless, frustrated... On some days she'd thought of giving everything up, her job, apartment, savings account, _everything_ , and going after Kogami. She had daydreamed about living with him in Hong Kong, finding a new life away from the Sibyl System. Just a happy couple.

But that dream was fading. The System that she served was going after the man that she...

 _...loved?_

Akane closed her eyes.

Ginoza cleared his throat. "There is no distinction. We _are_ a part of the Ministry of Welfare, and as such we have the responsibility to investigate any tampering of Cymatic Grid installations. Any Inspector of the Public Safety Bureau should know that."

 _Ouch._ "Ginoza's right, of course," Akane said. "But I wanted to point out that as team members, as police officers, we should be loyal to each other. That's all."

 _The last thing I need is for Ginoza to find a new purpose in life investigating me._ Ever since Masaoka's death, his son had withdrawn from the others and become a shell of his former self. These days Ginoza was reticent, taciturn, and unfriendly. He turned down offers to socialize with his colleagues after hours, and from the office scuttlebutt she'd overheard, he wasn't integrating well with the other Enforcers. As an Inspector herself, she could hardly blame him for that. She wasn't sure how _she_ would react if she were to be suddenly declared a latent criminal and demoted to the status of mere property. It was a big fall in the social pecking order.

"Anyway, what kind of disturbance is it?" Akane asked.

Kunizuka tapped at her keyboard. Moments later a map of Tokyo appeared, with the old Warehouse District highlighted in bold red. "The industrial sector is entirely automated these days—it runs off of self-correcting machinery." A few more keystrokes brought the red area of the map into sharper focus. "Earlier this morning, around midnight, a voltage overload was detected by the Grid's security sensors, knocking one of the receivers offline for nearly two minutes. These kinds of problems aren't unheard of—sometimes a bad thunderstorm can cause them. The receivers don't get much maintenance."

"How was the weather last night?" Ginoza. Ever the consummate Inspector, even from the Enforcer's kennel.

In response, Kunizuka called up a weather map. Clear skies for Japan, coast to coast.

"When was the last time that Grid receiver failed?" Akane asked. "Not just due to weather—from any cause."

"Checking that now." Kunizuka frowned at her monitor. "Huh. It looks like that receiver was fairly long-lived. The last time it needed repairs was six years ago. And that was purely preventative maintenance—it seems they needed to replace a backup battery."

"So this reliable piece of equipment failed last night during calm weather," Akane said. "Right, I'm going to check it out."

Ginoza looked surprised. "Now?"

"Yes." She stood and began to put on her coat. "Where is Mr Arishima?"

"I'll go with you—"

Akane lifted a hand. "No. Thank you, Ginoza, but I want to see how Mr Arishima handles his first case. Where is he?"

"Miss Karanomori asked him to help set up some new server racks—"

"So he's in Shion's bed, got it." Akane rolled her eyes. "Give him five minutes, then go and tell him to meet me at the Warehouse District."

"Yes, ma'am."

As she walked out of the office, Akane felt a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. It wasn't a nice smile. It was more like a hunting dog's canine grin when it first picks up the scent of prey.

 _Maybe I wouldn't make such a bad Enforcer after all,_ she thought.

* * *

"Well, this is interesting."

"What is it?"

"This." Choe pointed to a line of gibberish on one of his monitors. Kagari leaned closer for a better look. _Still nonsense._

"Yeah, what is it?"

"Scanners say we've got a guest." Choe grunted. "Make that _two_ guests. PSB. Both armed with Dominators. Well, well, well."

Kagari sprang to his feet. "Who is it?" he asked eagerly. "Is it Kogami? Ginoza? Oh, I'll bet it's old man Masaoka, he never could—"

"I'm reading a female, early twenties, Japanese. Also reading a male, late twenties, Japanese. The guy's got a knife hidden in his boot."

 _Akane._ "I know her. She's an Inspector. A good one, too." Kagari couldn't help bouncing from foot to foot. A grin crept over his face. He hadn't seen his friends in what seemed like years. "Can I see her?"

Choe nodded. "Go look into that monitor over there. The feed'll be up in a sec."

It _was_ Tsunemori. She didn't look good. "Too thin," Kagari said slowly. And there were dark circles ringing her pretty eyes. She looked utterly exhausted, and somehow different. _She looks like someone else._

It took him a minute to realize who. _Kogami. She looks like Kogami._

But Kogami hadn't looked like Kogami, at least not at first. It had taken Sasayama's death to transform the grinning dark-haired ladykiller Kogami into the brooding, look-at-me-and-I'll-kill-you maniac Kogami who had brought in so many latent criminals for the PSB.

 _She's headed down the same path,_ Kagari thought. _She doesn't know it yet, but she's going to end up just like us._

"They're checking out the Cymatic relay that I use for Grid access," Choe said. "Interesting. I wonder why. I tried to mask any signals. I wonder if there's something wrong with my code."

Kagari frowned and looked closer at the monitor. "Cymatic relay," he repeated. "Is that the tower they're looking at? The thing with the antennas?"

"Yes."

 _Oh, shit._

Choe glanced at him, looked away, then looked back again, eyes narrowing. "What is it?"

Kagari scratched the back of his neck and shrugged. "It's nothing, really, but I might have used that... relay... to enter your headquarters."

The swivel chair slowly spun to face him. The hacker looked at him with an expression of incredulous disbelief. "Are you saying that you used a _Cymatic Grid_ relay to piggyback into my network? Is that what you're really telling me, Shusei?"

"Yeah. Well, I might have."

"You didn't think to—oh, I don't know— _use the fucking Internet junction_ instead?"

"I tried," Kagari protested. "I did. But when I tried to enter that way, it gave me some kind of static shock. It felt like my whole body was being fried in a microwave, you know? I thought it was going to cook me alive. So I backed out and found another way inside." He shrugged and gave Gu-sung his best apologetic grin. "What's the big deal?"

The hacker's eyes widened. "The big deal? You want to know what the big deal is, Shusei? Okay, I'll tell you."

"Yeah, what?"

Choe pointed to the monitor, where a black-and-white version of Akane was unscrewing the panel on the side of the Cymatic Grid relay. "That's the big deal. You lit this whole place up like a Christmas tree. Now the PSB is curious, and when the PSB is curious, people get _fucked_."

"Relax, would you? They're on our side."

Choe snorted. "Then what are those things in their holsters, Shusei? Are they by chance _Dominators,_ which are _connected to the Sibyl System?_ "

"Look, Dominator or no Dominator, Akane is on our side. You have to trust me. She would _never_ work with the Sibyl System if she knew the truth of the matter."

"You're sure about that?"

"Yeah, of course." Kagari scratched his chin and began to pace. "I just need a chance to talk to her in private. Once I explain everything, I know she'll want to help out."

"So you need a private talk with an Inspector of the Public Safety Bureau, whose status automatically gains her a Level-3 security suite on her public and private life. That's CommuField, her banking credentials, even her cellphone."

"Can you do it?"

"Of course." Choe turned back to his main computer and began to quickly type in commands. "You can talk to her tonight. We'll wait until she's home, then crack her apartment and insert you into her household AI."

"Great."

Kagari dragged a chair over to the monitor and sat, his nose nearly pressed to the glass. He watched Akane and her new colleague follow PSB protocol as they swept the area and ran interference tests, a job that took the better part of two hours. When it was over, and the Inspectors had gone, Kagari remained in his chair, staring into the empty alley, thinking.

* * *

"Did you learn all of this from Inspector—I mean, Enforcer Ginoza?"

Akane looked up from replacing the last screw of the relay station. "This?" She frowned. "No. I learned it at the Academy."

"No, I didn't mean—" Arishima hesitated. "I meant _this_. Everything. The instinct that there's something more here than just a faulty relay. You suspect something, don't you?"

"Oh, you mean the detective's intuition."

Arishima blinked. "Pardon?"

"That was something from another colleague. Shinya Kogami." Akane brought the final clasping piece into alignment and pushed the catch inwards. It locked into place. "He's gone. I don't know where." The lie burned her lips.

"Mr Ginoza spoke of him." The rookie Inspector paused. "Were you close?"

"We were friends," Akane said.

Itaru Arishima was painfully diffident, but a quick learner and eager to climb the Ministry ladder. In other words, he was exactly like she had been during her first month at the Bureau. He didn't yet know what he didn't know. She felt sorry for him, in a way. He was tall and handsome, and even younger than her, but there was something about him. Something in his eyes.

 _Innocence._ She sighed. _Or maybe it's ignorance._

"It doesn't look like they left any leads." Arishima's tone indicated that he didn't believe there to have been any suspects in the first place, but he was polite enough not to say it.

"We're dealing with a sophisticated group." Akane pulled out her cellphone and tapped a quick message to Kunizuka to begin regular surveillance of the Warehouse District. "They wouldn't leave anything obvious behind."

Arishima seemed to smile to himself. "Hardened criminals, then."

This was the man who would be conducting the operation to capture Kogami. _If_ she refused, which of course she would. Akane chewed her bottom lip. _He's callow and too young. He has no business leading that kind of raid._ But nevertheless, despite her misgivings, Itaru Arishima would be calling the shots, would be responsible for Shinya Kogami's life and well-being.

 _I won't do it._

Akane pocketed her cellphone. "Well, that should do it. We'll wait for the scans to see if anything comes up."

"Do you want me to walk you to the station, ma'am?"

Akane shook her head. "No, you go on ahead. I'll order a cab."

"All right. Good evening."

She watched Arishima walk away, her eyes narrowed. _I can't let him risk Kogami's life. A rookie like him doesn't know how to conduct a non-lethal capture. Damn it._

* * *

That evening, she ate what Candy gave her without complaint, glanced through the CommuField lobby without interest, and then drew a warm bubble bath. The aches and pains in her muscles seemed like gnarls in a tree limb, and she felt about as limber as one. She brought a glass of wine into the bathroom with her.

 _It's time to unwind._

Her first step into the bathtub made her shiver with pleasure. When she slid up to her neck in sudsy water, her eyes rolled back in her head and she groaned.

 _Oh, god, this feels good._

Akane rested her head against the tile and sighed.

Then she froze.

Someone was watching her. She felt the instinctive prickling sensation of the observed. She sat up in the tub. "Candy? Is that you?"

As if in response, the AI materialized in front of her, hanging above the water like a frozen ray of moonlight. Akane began to relax, expecting to hear a lecture on the ideal temperature of bubble bath water, but what she got was something completely different.

Kagari's face appeared in mid-air—and then _winked_ at her.

Akane screamed.


	5. Plans

"I'm sorry you had to hear it this way," Akane said.

Kagari didn't respond.

She wanted to add something more, to somehow lessen the blow, but she couldn't think of anything to say. She'd had months to deal with her own grief, and during that time it had changed from a hot angry presence in her chest to a sadness that accompanied her around like a constant companion. So to her, this was a joyous occasion—seeing a friend miraculously returned to life. To Kagari, though, it was a huge shock—he and the old man had shared a close friendship. In many ways, Kagari had known Tomomi Masaoka better than Ginoza.

Kagari stared down at the carpet, as if divining some insight from the fibers there. His sudden appearance in Akane's apartment had led to an ecstatic reunion, with Akane breaking down into tears and Kagari looking uncomfortable at her emotional reaction, and both telling each other stories of what had happened to them since the attack on Nona Tower. Akane's disbelief at Kagari's revelation about the true nature of the Sibyl System was only partly feigned. His description of Caneworth elicited genuine skepticism from her—she didn't think it credible that the Sibyl System would go to all the trouble of creating such an elaborate anachronism, but when Kagari told her of the gods he had met there, and the cavalier nature of their cruelties, a look of dawning recognition seemed to enter her eyes.

Then Akane had spoken of the Bureau, and their mutual friends, and now…

 _Maybe I should have lied to him,_ Akane thought sadly. _He doesn't deserve this._

The redhead shuddered and seemed to go limp in his chair. Choe Gu-sung's program had hijacked Candy, forcing the holographic projectors built into Akane's apartment to form a replica of Kagari's mental self-image. He appeared much as he had in life—though, Akane thought, perhaps a bit more dashing.

"He wrote your eulogy," Akane said. "Masaoka, I mean."

Kagari looked up. His eyes were bloodshot. Even holographically, they looked sad. "Did he insult me?"

Akane blinked. "What? No, of course not!"

"That old bastard," Kagari sighed. "I knew he wouldn't go through with it." At Akane's puzzled look, he added, "We had a deal. If one of us bought the farm before the other, we were supposed to call each other horrible names during the ceremony."

"Oh."

"We came up with the idea during one of Ginoza's stakeouts. This was before you came on the force—say, three years ago? Anyway, there was a perp who suddenly snapped one day, went from a Crime Coefficient of 35 to over 170 in less than two hours. We'd never seen anything like it." Kagari shook his head slowly, his eyes seeming to mist over with the memory. "This guy somehow managed to slip through the interdiction nets. Vanished like smoke. Never seen anything like _that,_ either."

"What happened?"

"Well, since the _Officer's Handbook_ didn't have anything in it about magical criminals who could evade the PSB's sensors, Ginoza had no clue what to do. You should have seen his face." Kagari chuckled. "He looked _green._ Anyway, the idiot had the bright idea of putting his two best Enforcers on stakeout duty at the perp's apartment. The one place in the whole world that he'd be sure never to show his face, right? Well, try telling Nobuchika Ginoza that. I sure did."

"He usually goes by the book," Akane said diplomatically.

The redhead snorted. "That's 'cause he's got as much sense as a cut of salmon."

"Actually, Ginoza's been the most effective of my Enforcers. He's changed."

"Really? That's a surprise. What happened?"

Akane winced. _I shouldn't have brought it up._ "After Masaoka died."

Kagari's face slowly lost its expressiveness. His eyes grew hooded and he looked back down. "Right," was all he said.

Akane sighed and fiddled with her teacup. She looked around her apartment for inspiration, trying to find something to rouse her friend from his grief, but nothing presented itself. Then she paused. _What am I doing? I'm the head of Division One of the Public Safety Bureau. I'm a Senior Inspector. Kagari was an Enforcer—technically, he still_ is _an Enforcer. Why am I treating him like spun glass?_

"Kagari."

He looked up.

Akane made her tone gentle but firm. "You can't fall to pieces right now just because Masaoka died. I know you're grieving, and I sympathize, but there are too many urgent things to discuss." She took a deep breath. "I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to ask you to pull yourself together."

The redheaded Enforcer blinked. He looked at Akane's face, then around her apartment. He finally focused on his shoes. "Well, that was a surprise."

"What was?" Akane demanded.

 _"That."_ He nodded to her. "Akane Tsunemori acting like an Inspector of the MWPSB for once. Things really have changed, haven't they? Back when I used to run with you, you'd flinch if Kogami even looked at you funny."

"Ginoza wasn't the only one who changed," Akane said. "I did, too."

"I can see that." Kagari sighed, then seemed to shake himself like a wet dog drying its coat. He rubbed his face with his palms and then inhaled sharply. "All right, Inspector. What are your orders?"

"You said that Choe Gu-sung has plans to take down the Sibyl System."

"That's right. And I'm going to help him."

"You should both know that Sibyl's defenses have been upgraded since Makishima's attack on the Tower. The Cymatic scan helmet trick won't work again—the algorithms have been upgraded. And the Tower itself has been hardened against physical attacks. There are auto-gun emplacements now, controlled directly by Sibyl. A garrison of the SDF has been positioned nearby with heavy weaponry." Akane spread her hands. "There's really no chance for a repeat of the last attack. You'd be cut down before you could even get near the heart of Sibyl."

Kagari smiled. "There's no need for that. Choe found a hole in the Tower's firewalls. The next time we go in, it won't be through the front door."

Akane frowned. _If they really have a way of getting inside the firewall, their attack might actually work. The defense drills are almost always about physically securing the Tower. The MWPSB never discusses cyber-defenses—they're considered to be invulnerable._ For human programmers to think about second-guessing the peerless Sibyl System was laughable. _It seems like Sibyl's arrogance might be its downfall._

"And when are you planning to carry out this attack?" Akane asked carefully.

"Well, that was partly why I asked Choe to send me here." Kagari looked at her current apartment décor—a floral-wallpaper, shag-carpet extravaganza of retro style—and grinned at her. "Of course, seeing Akane Tsunemori's home up close was an extra incentive. What's going _on_ in here, by the way? Where did you get all this stuff?"

Akane felt her face grow warm. "It's my grandmother's. I found the holo-discs in her vault after she died. It's her birthday next month, so..."

"I get it. That's sweet of you. Mind you, I'd never do anything like that for _my_ grandma. She used to chase me around the house with a stick, 'cause I used to steal stuff from the mall." Kagari shook his head with a sigh. "Of course, even back then I'd already been labeled as a latent criminal, so I figured, why bother fighting it? Just fulfill my destiny and get it over with—and in the meantime pick up some sweet stuff. But she did it for my own good, I guess."

Akane opened her mouth to offer her friend some commiserating words, but something stopped her. She thought of her earlier lie to Kagari—a lie by omission, yes, but a lie nonetheless. Kagari seemed completely convinced that the Sibyl System was unjust and should be dismantled. Why didn't _she_ feel the same way? _It's solved so many problems for society. Theft, murder, rape—they're all nightmares of the past. We don't have to fear walking down an alley in the middle of the night any longer. Sibyl has shown us that there's nothing to fear in the dark—that all human beings are equally trustworthy, equally kind, because Sibyl has vouched for them, and Sibyl knows us all._ But didn't that mean Sibyl would have to know Shusei Kagari, too? And if it did, then wasn't his status as a latent criminal justified?

She couldn't be sure. She had trusted the System all her life, and even after learning that it was made up of criminally asymptomatic brains, a revelation that had shaken her faith to its core, Akane still believed in the fundamental goal of the Sibyl System: to make the world a safe place for people to live. _But you know Shusei Kagari,_ a voice whispered in her head. _You know he doesn't deserve a life of imprisonment, a life spent hunting down other criminals like a dog. You know he has a good heart._ Akane blinked, and was surprised to find that tears were clinging to the corners of her eyes. She wiped them away angrily.

"Are you okay?" Kagari asked, looking concerned.

"I'm fine," she sniffed, and lied again. "I was just thinking about my grandmother."

Akane thought of Masaoka—the hardbitten detective, a relic from a world long past—and Kunizuka, a girl who just wanted freedom through her music. Were they all to be condemned? She thought of a monster like Shogo Makishima—if the Sibyl System could seek him out and elevate him to its own ranks, while simultaneously forcing a good person like Kagari into prison, was it actually making the world a just place? Or was it making the world a _tame_ place?

An image of the Enforcers' quarters suddenly popped into her head. It had never looked more like a kennel.

Then she thought of Japan itself—an island that had somehow avoided the nuclear catastrophe of the past century, when other nations built themselves up, raged against their neighbors, and just as quickly fell to pieces. The Japanese people believed themselves to be the fortunate ones, but perhaps that was not the case. Perhaps the nuclear wars had been— _should_ have been—an extinction event, and those who survived were like an endangered species kept alive in captivity. Perhaps Sibyl was their zookeeper.

 _No,_ she thought. _That's not it._

She pictured, instead, countless strings dangling from Nona Tower, as millions of marionettes lived, danced, and died in unthinking unison.

 _That's it._

"Kagari," Akane said. "When is Choe planning to attack?"

"Soon," he replied. "We wanted to find someone on the ground, in the real world, to help us. I thought of you."

When had she become so blind? It was staring her right in the face—the cause of her ennui. The reason for the sadness that would periodically swallow her whole. It had taken Kagari coming back from the dead to snap her out of an unthinking malaise... To realize that what was not _logical_ might still be _right._ The Sibyl System had driven the man she loved into exile, and now it dared to threaten his life, thinking her a tame puppet. She knew what she had to do.

 _It's time to cut my strings._

"Someone on the ground," Akane repeated, smiling. "I think I have just the person for you."

Kagari blinked. "Who?"

 _Kogami,_ she thought, her smile growing wider. _Shinya Kogami._

* * *

"He's back."

"Can he hear us?"

"I don't know, Vice-Chairman."

 _"Shogo?"_

The blackness of oblivion fled; Makishima felt warmth return to his limbs, sight to his eyes, sound to his ears. He inhaled sharply and opened his eyes. For a moment the world spun sickeningly, and he came close to throwing up. But then the room seemed to right itself, and he saw that he was sitting half-crouched in the center of the Awakening Portal, which before his eyes seemed to fade away, as if it had been drawn with invisible ink.

Evelyn Sawaki was lying nearby, being tended to by Naoka and another Sibyl technician. She seemed to be unconscious. _What did she say before we left?_ Makishima searched his memory, grasping with clumsy fingers through a fog of amnesia. _She said that I saved her._

Masuda and Yamato were suddenly hovering over him—or perhaps they had been there all along. Makishima looked up at the Vice-Chairman, whose ruddy countenance seemed immensely relieved to see him alive and well.

"It worked," Makishima said, hoarsely.

"I see that." Yamato clapped him on the shoulder, hard. "Good work, Shogo. I knew you wouldn't let us down. The Sibyl System owes you a debt of gratitude." He hesitated, then lowered his voice. "And the latent criminals?"

For the first time, Makishima realized that murdering all of Caneworth's latent criminals might not have had the official sanction of Sibyl. _Wonderful._ He closed his eyes and breathed in through his nose. "Dead. All of them."

Yamato gave a self-satisfied smile. "Very good."

"You saved her, Shogo," Masuda breathed into his ear, too close, and Makishima glanced at him. The programmer's eyes were shining. "Thank you."

"You're welcome."

Makishima let the two men help him upright—his muscles seemed to have the consistency of toasted jelly. He wobbled for a few seconds before Masuda caught him. "What's wrong with me?"

"You just experienced a tremendous mental strain," Yamato explained as Makishima was half-carried to a nearby chair. "When you used the Authorship to dismiss the latent criminals, leaving Evelyn and yourself as the only participants of Caneworth, the responsibility of generating its environments fell solely to you both. And when Evelyn lost consciousness, it came to you entirely." Yamato shook his head. "I do not think you realize how extraordinary you are, Shogo. To be able to hold within your mind the entirety of Caneworth, even for a matter of seconds—it was an incredible feat, worthy of Mr Chambers himself."

"Is that so?"

"Yes," Masuda said eagerly. "And he wants to meet you, Shogo. Isn't that wonderful? The old man himself wants to speak to you _in person._ " He sighed. "What an honor!"

 _Mr Chambers is the last person I want to see,_ Makishima thought grimly. "Could I get a few hours of sleep first?" he asked. "I'd like to be well-rested for our first meeting."

"Of course, of course," Yamato murmured, and patted him again on the shoulder. "Take as much time as you need. Masuda here will see that you are taken to the infirmary. Once again, Shogo, well done."

The Vice-Chairman nodded to Masuda and left. Makishima watched him go, then turned his attention to the woman, who still seemed to be comatose. "Is she going to be all right?" he asked Masuda.

The Sibyl programmer looked at Evelyn with a possessive gleam in his eyes. "She'll survive," he sighed, and rested his hand comfortably on Makishima's shoulder. "She's a fighter."

"And beautiful, too," Makishima said, deciding to test one of his hunches.

Hiroki's hand tightened for a brief second, then withdrew from his shoulder. The look that Makishima received was a good deal less friendly than it had been moments before.

"Yes, very beautiful." Masuda hesitated. "I didn't think she was your type."

"I can appreciate a beautiful woman as well as any man."

"Can you?" Masuda's hand returned to his shoulder, questing, and a fingertip brushed his collarbone.

"In fact, I may take her up on her invitation to dine together," Makishima added with a smile. "That is, once she recovers from her ordeal."

Masuda locked eyes with him. "She won't be interested in that, Shogo. Evelyn has… prior engagements."

Makishima chuckled. "With you?"

The programmer gestured to the door, ignoring his question. "We should get you to the infirmary, Shogo. You need to be looked at by our physician."

 _Just as I thought. He's in love with her._

Makishima slung his arm around the other man's shoulder and began to hobble toward the doorway. His trip to Caneworth had been more fruitful than he'd realized. In all his time spent in the Sibyl System so far, _this_ was what he had been missing—leverage. The ability to bend a human being to his will, to unleash a person's desires to his own ends… It would never get old, not in a million years.

 _I can use this._

* * *

Makishima held out his arm and let the nurse replace the bandages that swaddled his left bicep and shoulder. He looked like an Egyptian mummy that had been interrupted half-way through the embalmment ceremony.

It had confused him, at first, this business of mental wounds inflicting physical maladies. But as Yamato explained it, these weren't actually physical wounds at all, as nobody in the Sibyl System possessed a body. They were instead a kind of imprint on the body's mental self-image. Makishima's rescue of Evelyn Sawaki had put his mind under great strain, and the result wasn't merely a headache—though he had one of those too, unfortunately—but a series of black-and-blue bruises that ran down the length of the left side of his body.

This was the third day after his return to the Blue Astrocyte. He had played up his injuries as much as he could, and the medical staff still seemed to believe him. His goal, of course, was to postpone his face-to-face meeting with Mr Chambers for as long as possible. He spent much of his time pacing the length of the infirmary, which was empty save for him—Sibyl gods were a mostly healthy sort, it seemed.

 _He must have gotten out safely,_ Makishima thought. _He must have._

 _He_ being, of course, the Enforcer he'd met in Caneworth. If the man had successfully reached Choe, then Makishima _should_ be receiving a message soon. He wasn't sure how the hacker would do it, but that Gu-sung would succeed he had no doubt.

As for what would happen afterwards, he wasn't yet sure. Probably Choe would have some insight that would illuminate a way forward—at least that was what Makishima hoped. From his current vantage, Sibyl was frighteningly defensible.

 _They learned from our last attack. This Mr Chambers, whoever or whatever he is, isn't stupid._

"There," said the nurse, and tied a neat knot at his shoulder. Makishima flexed his bicep and nodded. "You're all set, sir."

"Thank you," Makishima said, and turned away. But he paused and turned back, his face curious. "Are you a latent criminal?"

The nurse, a plump, mildly attractive young woman, looked startled at his question, then nodded shyly. She had a mole on the right side of her nose, which Makishima found oddly alluring.

"What did you do?" Makishima asked.

The nurse hesitated. She looked around the infirmary, saw that it was deserted, and seemed to waver in a moment of indecision. But then she shook her head. "I'm sorry, sir, but we aren't supposed to tell. We promised."

"I see. That's fine." Makishima smiled. "By the way, would you happen to know where they're treating the other patient? The woman—Evelyn Sawaki?"

"She's just down the hall, sir, in room 6."

"Thank you."

Makishima nodded to her and left. The infirmary was on the ground floor of the Astrocyte, and since there were only eight private rooms adjoining it, number 6 wasn't very difficult to find. He went to the door and gave it a quick rap with his knuckles, then opened it and went inside.

It was the mirror of his own room—a smallish space with a single cotton-sheeted bed, a chair for the visiting physician, a gray metal cabinet holding various disinfectants and medicines, and little else. In this room, however, the bed was occupied by a woman. She appeared to be asleep.

Makishima watched her from the doorway. _The way she looked at me in Caneworth,_ he thought. _It's as if she thought I was a completely different person._

He turned to go.

"Wait."

Makishima paused. "Oh, you're awake."

"Yes." Sawaki turned to face him, the sheets crumpling against her body. The room was dim, illuminated only by a single light-panel on the ceiling, and her eyes seemed to glint at him from the darkness. "Hello, Shogo."

"Hello," he returned, and came closer to the bed. "How are you feeling?"

"Painful," the woman admitted. "I might have gotten beaten up by a hundred people. That's what it feels like."

Makishima smiled and said, "I know what you mean." He gestured to his bandaged arm. "I managed to get away with only a few bruises. I think your injuries would be more severe." He looked closely at her face. "May I ask what it was like, in Caneworth?"

Sawaki closed her eyes. "Dying, you mean."

"Well, that's what Mr Yamato calls it, but I'm not so sure." Makishima came closer, seated himself on the chair beside the bed. He averted his eyes from her body. Gravity had tugged the fabric down, outlining a soft curve of skin. "Did it seem like death to you?"

Sawaki's eyes opened into slits and stared up at the ceiling, sightless. "It was like a dream," she said softly. "I was lost in a dark abyss, and there were voices murmuring my name all around me. Then they stopped, and I, I wanted them to keep going, but they couldn't hear me. They grew fainter and fainter, and then it was only me." She swallowed. "Only me and the darkness."

"That sounds quite horrible," Makishima said.

"It _was._ I floated there for an eternity, with only my thoughts, and I…" A tear rolled down Sawaki's cheek. Makishima watched it fall without expression. "I lost my mind. I _know_ I did. I was afraid, Shogo, deeply afraid."

She turned to face him, and her eyes stared up at him with a lustful hunger.

"But then I heard something. It was a voice calling out to me, calling into the darkness." She swallowed, licking her lips. "It was _you,_ Shogo. It was your voice. I heard you and knew that I was saved."

"I'm glad you're okay," Makishima said, voice soft as a whisper, "but it wasn't me, Evelyn. Yamato and Masuda arranged the rescue. Probably Mr Chambers had a hand in it as well. I just did what they asked."

At the words _Mr Chambers_ Evelyn Sawaki's eyes grew wide with terror. She sat bolt upright in bed and reached a shaking hand out toward Makishima. "You haven't met him yet, have you?" she demanded. "Please say you haven't, Shogo!"

 _Why is she so agitated?_ Makishima slowly shook his head. "I haven't. I've been recovering in the infirmary with you. Why?"

"Oh, thank God." Sawaki sagged back down, and for the first time Makishima saw how frail she was. Her arms trembled from the strain of holding herself upright. "Listen to me, Shogo. You mustn't agree to meet Chambers. He isn't what you think. Do you understand?"

"Yes," he said slowly. "But you have to explain. Why is he so dangerous? Does he want to kill me?"

"He doesn't want to kill you," Sawaki whispered, exhausted. "He doesn't care if you live or die, Shogo. Death is immaterial to him. _He isn't human._ "

Makishima blinked, then opened his mouth. He couldn't think of anything to say to that, so he closed it again. _He's not human?_

"Promise me you'll stay away from him," Sawaki said softly.

"He wants to meet me," Makishima said.

"That's the first step. You must avoid it at all costs, Shogo."

"I may not have a choice."

"You must find some way of stalling them."

Makishima gazed at her with narrowed eyes. _"Them?"_ he echoed.

"Kurou knows the truth. He is one of the few to understand what Sibyl really is." Sawaki closed her eyes and grimaced. "You mustn't trust anything that man says. He is an adder."

 _Just as I suspected. But how can I trust her? She is a psychopath, and notorious for her cruelty._ Makishima studied Sawaki's face. _But she's changed, somehow, since Caneworth. I can read that much from her face._

"Evelyn, what _is_ Mr Chambers?" he asked.

Sawaki shook her head. "I can't tell you, Shogo, not yet. If you were to hear that knowledge, Chambers would know instantly and seek you out. Your best chance is to find some way of avoiding him that won't raise suspicions." She chewed her lower lip and gazed at him intently, her eyes lovely and brown. _She is beautiful, isn't she?_ Something about Evelyn Sawaki reminded him of a wild animal. In that, Makishima thought wistfully, she was like Shinya Kogami.

"When can you tell me?" he demanded.

"Telling you would sign your death warrant. I can't do that."

 _Would trusting this woman be too dangerous?_ Makishima wasn't entirely certain, but he took the risk anyway. _If I'm wrong, I die. These kinds of stakes are what makes life exhilarating and worth living._

"Evelyn, I have a plan to destroy the System." He looked at her face. Her expression flicked through surprise and quickly transformed into hope.

"When?"

"Just as you can't tell me about Mr Chambers, I'm not sure I can trust you yet," he replied. "But it will be soon. In the meantime, I will try my best to avoid Mr Chambers. Will you keep me apprised of the Vice-Chairman's plans?"

"Yes," she said softly.

Makishima nodded, and turned to leave.

 _"Shogo."_

He paused by the doorway. "Yes?"

"I love you."

For a moment, Makishima looked as if he would respond in kind. But he simply stared at her for a moment before nodding and leaving the room.

In the hallway, he paused, a half-smile rising to tug at the corner of his lips. _Kurou knows the truth, she said._ He began to walk with a purpose toward the nearest bank of elevators. _I think it's time I learn more about the Vice-Chairman's background, and I know just the person to ask._

* * *

"It's going to look suspicious if I leave the Dominator in the car for too long," Akane muttered to her wrist. There, alongside her PSB-issued communicator, lay what had been the most coveted device of her high school years: a portable holo-projector with integrated CPU and microphone, capable of beaming CommuField shows directly into the real world. It had cost a fortune of credit card debt (Akane _still_ hadn't paid it off) and then sat unused for years, having taken a backseat to first her schooling, then her new career. Until now.

"You should have left it at home," a tinny reproduction of Kagari's voice said, wafting from the speaker on her wrist. "That's what I did."

"I know, and you used to get written up for it," Akane pointed out. "In fact, _I_ used to write you up, Shusei."

"I thought that was Ginoza! Is that why I lost roaming privileges?"

"Affirmative," Akane said cheerfully.

"I can't believe you would do that to me, Akane-chan!"

 _"Be quiet."_

The worker entrance of the Shoju Industrial Manufacturing Center was an ordinary steel door set low against the high facade of the crumbling factory. Akane entered an alphanumeric code on the small rusted keypad next to the door and waited. After a moment, a _snick_ was heard and the door slid quietly open.

Akane peered into the dusty darkness. _Well, that's a bit spooky._

"You can go inside. There's nothing there."

"It was Makishima's lair," Akane protested, with a slight shiver that she hoped Kagari wouldn't notice. "Forgive me if I don't want to just walk right in. It could be a trap."

"Akane, trust me," Kagari's voice sighed. "I really think we misjudged Gu-sung and Makishima. They're definitely the lesser of two evils. The Sibyl System is much worse."

Steeling herself, Akane walked into the darkness, expecting a hand to reach out and grab her at any moment. But nothing did. As she walked, her eyes slowly adjusted to the dim light, and she realized that what she had taken to be a _hallway_ was in fact a gigantic empty space—almost three football pitches in length, and several stories high. Each time she took a step her heels gave a resounding echo into that cavernous expanse.

"What did they build here?" Akane asked, awestruck by the sheer size of the factory. "It must have been big, whatever it was."

"No idea. Keep going straight. See that light in the far corner? That's Choe."

Akane squinted. By now she was more than halfway across the factory floor, yet she couldn't make out anything but the dimmest outline of the far wall. But then, as she passed two parked automobiles and a motorbike, she began to see a feeble blue glow in the distance.

"I see something."

"Keep going."

She did, though her feet were beginning to ache. _I didn't think this would involve a forced march,_ she grumbled to herself. _This Choe Gu-sung had better be worth it._

The blue glow proved to be the soft LED illuminations of a high-end computer. It was cube-shaped, sleekly built—and she knew she'd seen one before. Then she remembered where. _Karanomori has one in the Data Hive. According to her, it's a supercomputer, with availability restricted to the most trusted Japanese businesses and government agencies. How did Makishima's hacker get one?_

She entered the makeshift office space and looked around. "It's awfully dark in here," she said. "Can I turn on a light?"

There was the sound of a throat clearing, and then a new voice said, in gruff Japanese, "Be my guest, Inspector."

Akane whirled, her hand instinctively falling to her empty holster. _Damn it._ She looked around the L-shaped desk with wide eyes, her heart racing. _Who said that? There's nobody here!_

"Inspector, please calm yourself. You already looked at me."

"The computer," Kagari supplied dryly.

 _Oh._ Akane circled the desk slowly and stared at the computer.

"You seem surprised," Gu-sung's voice said, coming from a small speaker built into the cube.

"No." She shook her head. "I just expected you to be..."

"Human?"

Akane shrugged. "Maybe. When Kagari came to my apartment, he looked just like he did when I knew him." She took a deep breath, and despite the fact that she felt silly doing it, she gave the computer a deep bow. "I apologize for my rudeness, Mr Gu-sung. I just expected you to take a human form, that's all."

"I see." There was a sound of static. "Is this better?"

Above them, in the corner of the factory, an old holographic projector flared into life. Through a cloud of dust motes a beam of light was sent, focused on a spot directly across from Akane. At first just gray noise, the light grew brighter and sharper, until the silhouette of a man appeared, though still indistinct.

"One moment."

With a loud bang, a diesel generator rumbled to life at the far end of the factory. Akane jumped. At the same time, the floodlights on the ceiling turned themselves on, and when Akane looked back across the table, a man in his early thirties was staring back at her.

Choe Gu-sung was fairly ordinary in appearance—except for his eyes. They glowed yellow when Akane looked at him. _Of course,_ she thought. _Cyberized implants._ The hacker was attired in a white shirt and low-slung jeans. An earring—whether purely ornamental or of some function purpose, she couldn't tell for sure—poked out from one earlobe. All in all, Makishima's sidekick gave an unassuming impression.

 _He looks like a computer programmer,_ Akane thought. She'd seen his type before, in the arcades outside of the business district. _But I should be careful. This is the man who brought Makishima's desire for chaos into reality._

"Do I meet your expectations?" Gu-sung asked dryly, having noticed Akane's scrutinizing stare.

"You look harmless enough," Akane replied, and smiled when the hacker grimaced.

"Shogo always took credit for being the dangerous one," Gu-sung sighed.

Akane raised an eyebrow. "Well, wasn't he?"

The hacker sighed again. "Touché."

 _He's not what I expected. He seems too_ normal _to have helped Makishima kill so many innocent people. But I can't forget what he is. He deserves to stand trial just like the man he follows._

"Sorry to interrupt, but can we get on with things?" Kagari asked. "I mean, it's not like the Sibyl System is still out there oppressing the Japanese people or anything."

"He's right," Akane said, and turned to the hacker. "Mr Gu-sung, Shusei tells me that you have the ability to break through Nona Tower's firewalls."

"I do, but I'm afraid we've had a small change in plans. The attack has been postponed."

Akane blinked. "What?"

Ignoring her, the hacker said to Kagari, "He sent a message."

" _Seriously?_ What did it say?"

"He wants us to look into the history of Kurou Yamato."

Kagari sounded crestfallen. "I've never heard of him."

"I have," Akane said.

And it was true: she was intimately familiar with the scion of the Yamato family, having written her thesis on the Sibyl System. Kurou had been the eldest son of a representative in the old Diet, before the deposing of the Japanese emperor and the brief establishment of martial law, and had played a pivotal role in the creation of modern Japan. Put simply, the country wouldn't exist as it now did without his efforts.

The hacker's yellow eyes fixed upon Akane. He must have known who Yamato was, Akane thought, but he seemed to be willing to let her fill in the gaps for Kagari. _Maybe he's trying to see how much I know._ His projected body shimmered as it rounded the desk to sit upon an equally illusory chair. He crossed his arms and watched her.

"Well, who is he, Akane-chan?" Kagari demanded impatiently.

"He was a politician before he died," Akane began, then stopped. "Well, actually, he was a transformational figure in Japanese history, not just a politician. He _created_ the Sibyl System, or at least its predecessor, the Karma Network. The entire system of Cymatic scans and assigned Psycho-Passes was his idea. Many people considered him to be a genius."

"Why does Makishima want us to research this old guy? I mean, what could he possibly have to do with helping us bring down Sibyl?"

"Shogo believes that he's important," Choe said quietly. "Therefore he _is_. We'll do as he asks."

"Fine, fine."

"I mean, it makes sense," Akane said slowly. "He was the creator of the Sibyl System, so it stands to reason that something in his life, something Makishima discovered or suspects, could help us. I'd say it's worth checking out."

"Great," Kagari said, sounding less than enthused. It was clear that he had been looking forward to planning an attack, not poring over a lifetime's worth of records of a deceased politician. "Where do we start?"

Akane waited, but Choe Gu-sung didn't budge from his chair. He sat with a serene expression and examined his fingernails, craned his head to peer up at the skylights, then cracked his knuckles. It was only when he turned to Akane and lifted his eyebrow, as if to say, _Well, get on with it, Inspector,_ that she understood what he was doing.

 _He wants to use my Bureau access to look into Yamato's restricted files._ Akane chewed on her lower lip. _Even if we're working together against Sibyl, can I give a hacker of Choe's caliber free access to the MWPSB's database?_

Gu-sung seemed to be aware of the ethical struggle that Akane was having. He watched her with evident amusement, a glint in his false yellow eyes. He seemed to view it as a sort of grand entertainment.

Akane closed her eyes. There really was no alternative, she knew. But that didn't mean she had to like it. "We can use my Ministry credentials to access the citizens' database," she said reluctantly. "It will have everything on Yamato—his schooling, his career, even personal documents."

"But the only terminal in the Public Safety Bureau with that level of access is in Shion's… _Oh!"_

Akane sighed. "That's right. We have to complete the search from _within_ Nona Tower. This is going to be tricky."

As if that were his cue to speak, Choe Gu-sung uncurled himself from a lazy sprawl on his chair and stood. He crossed the small office and pointed to a filing cabinet. "I believe I can help with the logistics, Inspector. You can carry us into the MWPSB right under everyone's noses. They'll be none the wiser."

"How?" Akane demanded.

"Open it."

She did as the hacker asked. Inside the cabinet was a… a…

"What the hell is that?" Kagari asked, voicing Akane's own question.

The hacker gave them both a pitying look. "Do neither of you have an appreciation for history?" He shook his head sadly. "This, my friends, is called a laptop."

"It's big."

"It's _old._ "

"It's our new home," Choe said. "It doesn't have any Cymatic circuitry in it, so the Tower's automatic scans won't pick up anything. But the quantum chip inside is quick enough to simulate both Kagari and myself. Inspector Tsunemori can bring it to work, wait for the database terminal to be unattended, and then connect us to the data-port. We'll download _everything._ "

 _That's what I was afraid of,_ Akane thought. "How long will it take to set up the laptop, Mr Gu-sung?"

"Transferring all of the programs I'll need should take a few hours."

"Fine. Get to work, then."

The hacker smiled. "Yes, ma'am."

 _It's not the ideal course of action, but it's a necessary one. I'll have to get used to the idea that after Sibyl is gone, the world won't be organized and catalogued perfectly. It will be like it was in the old world. Messy and chaotic—but free._


	6. The Lady of Karma

The hard lines of the Dominator began to radiate blue light, like a deep sea anglerfish seeking to attract a meal. The handgun's chassis elongated very slightly—not enough to warrant Lethal Eliminator status, but enough to signify that it was no longer simply a tool for use by an Inspector. In this form, it was an envoy of the Sibyl System.

 _"Inspector Akane Tsunemori,"_ the genderless voice of the Sibyl System intoned.

Akane paused with her hand poised in front of the ID scanner at Nona Tower's eastern employee entrance. She juggled her styrofoam cup of hot coffee and used her right hand to disengage the weapon from its holster. She raised it to eye level and glared at it. "What?"

 _"We require your decision regarding the mission to capture Enforcer Shinya Kogami now."_

"What's the rush? Is Kogami going somewhere?"

 _"That information is restricted to the leader of the operation, Inspector. Will you assume that role? Answer now."_

"I will."

There was a short silence, as if the Sibyl System had been… taken by surprise? Akane swiped her ID and went into the building, holding the Dominator between thumb and forefinger like a dead rat. She made her way across the towering atrium, all cascading shafts of light and greenery, and toward the escalators that lead up to the Criminal Investigation Division offices.

 _"You changed your mind?"_

"Didn't you say it was likely I might have second thoughts?" Akane sipped her coffee. "I thought things over and came to the conclusion that Inspector Arishima is too inexperienced to lead such an operation."

 _"Nevertheless, he will take part in the planning and execution of the mission."_

Frowning, Akane stepped off the escalator and walked down the hallway leading to her department. _They must want another Inspector to keep an eye on me._ "Fine. I'll speak to Arishima-san tomorrow, then."

 _"Do not delay too long, Inspector. We will be displeased if Enforcer Kogami escapes again."_

"I'll keep that in mind."

As Akane reached the glass doors partitioning Division One from the other offices, her Dominator shrank to its usual size, its eerie glow disappearing. With a distasteful look, Akane shoved it back into its holster and went inside.

* * *

When Akane entered the office, she went straight to her desk. Ginoza was on the telephone with some local prefectural official, from the sound of it discussing recent spikes in area Psycho-Passes near musical performances. It was speculated that Sibyl might hand down an edict limiting all public rock concerts. He gave Akane a nod before returning to his call.

Kagari's old chair was empty. "Yayoi, where is Arishima?" she asked. "He's not late, is he?"

"No, Senior Inspector," Kunizuka returned, rising to greet her with a polite bow. "Mr Arishima went to collect our department's latest assignments. There's something wrong with the inter-office network."

 _Perfect,_ Akane thought.

She brought her bag up to her desk and went about loudly emptying it. When she slid the laptop out from its sleeve, Kunizuka frowned and came over for a closer look. It was an odd-looking hinged device, almost like a big plastic book with buttons, and it took her a few tries to get it sitting right-way-up.

"What's that?" Kunizuka asked, curious.

"It was a gift from Mr Masaoka," Akane lied, and demonstrated how the screen could be raised and lowered. The Enforcer seemed duly impressed, though she might have just been being polite, Akane thought. "They used these in the old days, when policework involved gut instinct and lots of paperwork. Masaoka-san suggested that I write my reports on it."

"Well, if it worked for the old man, it's probably a good idea," Kunizuka murmured, before returning to her chair and putting her headphones back on.

"Thank you," Ginoza said through gritted teeth, one hand massaging his temples, the other holding the telephone. _He looks so stressed. Will his Psycho-Pass just keep getting worse, or will it ever stabilize?_ Her former boss's Crime Coefficient had recently eclipsed 149, which didn't bode well for the future. Akane watched him close his eyes and take deep calming breaths. "No, sir. Well, we haven't sent anyone because there's no reason for it—Bureau policy dictates that we only send stress teams to areas that… I understand that, sir, but we can't make exceptions simply because—"

Akane unbuckled her holster and placed it on her desk. Then, sliding the laptop under her arm, she waited by the door for Ginoza to conclude his call.

"Sir, if you would just listen to me..." Ginoza's face seemed to be reddening even as she watched. Akane shook her head. "It's not a matter of resources… Well, fine, do that. Good afternoon."

The Enforcer fairly slammed the receiver down. Akane raised an eyebrow, and Ginoza looked at her sheepishly.

"I'm sorry, Inspector. It's just that the head of the Ibaraki prefecture insists on receiving special treatment from the MWPSB, and I simply won't allow it." Ginoza hesitated. "He tried to pull the same stunt with me before, when I was, well..."

"When you were Senior Inspector," Akane finished for him.

Ginoza seemed to sag against the desk. "Right." The black-haired man gave a hollow-sounding laugh, as if his insides had been replaced with paper tubing. "He says he'll be contacting my superiors."

 _Maybe I can cheer him up._ "From now on, Enforcer Ginoza, I'm delegating you as Division One's exclusive representative to the Ibaraki prefecture."

For the first time in a long time, Akane saw a smile begin to form on Ginoza's mouth. His lips twitched a few times, threatening a full-on grin. "Thank you, Inspector." He gave her a formal bow, low.

Akane smiled back. "You're welcome, Nobuchika." She made a show of checking her communicator. "Well, I have to speak to Karanomori about the network outages. I'll be back soon. When Inspector Arishima returns, inform him that he's on duty until I relieve him. Until then, Ginoza, you hold down the fort."

"Yes, ma'am."

 _I hope that gives him something to look forward to,_ Akane thought, and she went off toward the Data Hive, the laptop clasped under her arm.

* * *

A cave.

That was what Shion's lair always reminded her of: a dark, damp, slimy cave—even though, strictly speaking, it wasn't any of those things. The Data Hive was an air-conditioned server room that the Division's chief data analyst (and part-time physician) had remodeled into a sort of cocoon surrounding her collection of technical equipment. She had outfitted the room with a dozen high-resolution holographic monitors, all showing real-time Cymatic Grid feeds. They were displaying the standard aerial view of Tokyo, with stress levels corresponding to different colors on the map; red was a riot akin to Makishima's past chaoses, while green was normal. Right now the view might as well have been of a golf course's immaculate fairway.

Akane poked her head inside the server room and looked around. "Shion?"

More than once she had caught the data analyst in mid-coitus, usually with Yayoi. _That was so awkward._ Karanomori had brought in a big red couch for the occasion—a couch that looked classy, elegant, and suspiciously sturdy. She could still picture Kunizuka's hair splayed out over its red fabric, her head tilted back as she moaned with pleasure…

Akane felt her face growing warm. She cleared her throat and moved quickly through the dark room, ensuring that it was empty. Once she was satisfied that they were alone, she locked the door and carried the laptop over to the holographic displays.

"Let's see here," she muttered. The laptop's power button depressed with a click. Akane stood back and watched as it booted up. "There, that should do it."

After about thirty seconds, Choe's voice rang out from the laptop's small speaker, crisp and commanding. "Did you remember to activate the anechoic generator?"

"Yes," Akane said. "It's been going since I got here."

"Good." The hacker did something that caused the laptop's screen to darken. "I'm bringing Kagari online now. He'll monitor the building's security network while you and I search the database."

"Right." She blinked. "Do you want me to do anything?"

"Do you see that red cable going into the wall?"

She peered behind the desk. There, at waist height, was a cable with a red sheath extending into one of Shion's computers. "I see it."

"Plug it into the port on the left side of the laptop. Again, the _left_ port, not the right one."

"Understood," Akane said, and, crawling under the desk, she managed to disconnect it from the computer and feed enough slack to reach the laptop. Then she climbed back to her feet and connected it. "There."

"Very good."

Akane looked curiously at the laptop's screen. "Is Kagari awake?"

"Yes. He is interacting with the security net. He will not be able to speak with you."

"Oh," Akane said, a little disappointed. "Well, what now?"

"There should be a data-port. A big one. Look for three red marks, like an ellipsis, on the cable."

Akane did another scan behind the desk, and this time found a heavy-duty Grid data-port—but its cable was fastened to the back of Shion's largest computer with a combination padlock. She relayed this information to Choe.

"Shit," the hacker said, and then, "Can you break it?"

In answer, she rummaged in her bag for a few seconds before displaying a handheld laser torch: yellow plastic, about the size of a glue gun.

"You're a lifesaver."

"She'll know somebody broke into her system," Akane said, as she bent down and began to score the padlock with the torch.

"Let's focus on one problem at a time, shall we?"

The metal gave way. Akane pocketed the laser torch and quickly removed the padlock. Then she disconnected the cable and routed it up to the laptop. When she clicked it into the port, Gu-sung cleared his throat thoughtfully.

"This doctor of yours..." The hacker trailed off and grunted, as if someone had punched him in the solar plexus. "She's no amateur, Inspector, that's for sure."

"Is she too good for you?" Akane teased.

"I wouldn't go that far." The images on the holographic monitors changed—instead of area Psycho-Passes, hundreds of photographs of men and women began to fill the screens. Most seemed to be driver's license photos, others might have been from CCTV cameras, and still others could only have been CommuField profile pictures. Each persisted for a few seconds at most before another image took its place, in a checkerboard pattern that seemed to spill over from screen to screen, as if wind were blowing a pile of leaves down a sidewalk.

Akane pulled Shion's chair out and sat on the edge, face fixed upon the monitors. "Who are those people?" she asked in fascination.

"These are all Japanese citizens with the surname Yamato," Choe replied, sounding distracted.

"You can't go directly to Kurou Yamato?"

The hacker sounded piqued. "You would think so, wouldn't you?"

"Shion?" Akane guessed.

Choe's grunt confirmed her conjecture. The images began to speed up, appearing and disappearing like strobing lights. "Your friend has locked down the ability to directly search for individual citizens. I can only use generic parameters, like given name and surname. And there are more Yamatos than you'd think."

"How long will it take?" She glanced at the door. "I don't know when Shion will get back."

"I'm almost tempted to stick around," the hacker said in a sour tone. "I'd like to meet her."

"Shion prefers men and women with _bodies,_ " Akane said dryly. "I don't think a virtual guy would work for her."

"Pity."

The blizzard of photographs began to slacken, each frame appearing and lingering for a longer period of time, as if frozen into the phosphors. Soon there were a few dozen left, and then, as Choe narrowed them down even further, the remainder began to vanish.

Then there were only two photographs left. The first was in black and white and depicted a stern-looking man in his late 70s with a gaunt face and a shock of white hair. Old-fashioned eyeglasses adorned his face, while his eyes stared at the camera like a hawk's. _He doesn't have cyberized implants,_ Akane realized with a start. He was standing on the steps of a pillared building, apparently a courthouse of some kind.

The second photograph was deceptively similar to the first. This one, too, was taken on the steps of a building, and its subject looked strikingly like the other man—but where the older man had been rake-thin and stared at the camera with active hostility, _this_ man was plump and smiling, with creases around his eyes vouching for his convivial nature.

Akane studied the two men and slowly shook her head. "Which one is which?" she asked. "They look almost like brothers. The chin, the nose…"

"The older man is Arinobu Yamato, founder of Blue Astrocyte Corporation," the hacker said, sounding as if he were reading from an encyclopedia entry. _Well, he might be._ "He made trillions of yen after securing government contracts in the aerospace sector and later unsuccessfully ran for Prime Minister. He was elected to the National Diet in 2050 and gained a reputation for being a shrewd political operator. He was well-liked by both the Conservatives and the Liberals, and before his death in 2059 he succeeded in sponsoring several successful bills, most of which involved keeping Japan out of the nuclear troubles afflicting the rest of Asia and the world."

"He was a smart man," Akane said. "What about his son?"

The photograph of Arinobu Yamato disappeared, and Kurou Yamato's image grew larger. Different photos of Kurou began to appear on the other monitors. There was a graduation photo, with a trim Kurou clasping hands with his father and holding aloft a diploma, and a similar pose that must have been taken decades later, with a bent and elderly Arinobu and a confident Kurou shaking hands in what appeared to be a company boardroom.

"That was taken when Kurou's father stepped down as Chairman of Blue Astrocyte Corporation," Choe supplied. "He had a series of strokes in the mid-Fifties, and later developed dementia."

Akane scooted her chair closer to the desk to stare at the photographs. "I don't get it," she said. "Why is Makishima so interested in this Yamato person?"

"He didn't say, but if he bothered to ask, it must be important. _Ah_."

"What?"

"I'm seeing encrypted files everywhere," the hacker said slowly. "But that doesn't make sense. His son was just a— _wait_ a second."

"What is it?" she demanded.

"It says here that Kurou Yamato was associated with Tokyo University's Neurology Department," Choe said, as if that should shock her.

 _What's that supposed to mean?_ Akane spread her hands.

The hacker sighed. "That was where the Sibyl System was first created. Tokyo University is part of the lore surrounding Sibyl, but not many people know the history these days. Back then it wasn't even called Sibyl—it was Karma, I think. Yeah, the Karma Network. Talk about ominous-sounding, right?"

"So this Kurou invented the Sibyl System?" Akane asked.

"No. Nobody knows who actually came up with the idea, it's a closely-guarded secret. But the one record I've been able to access says that Kurou, through Blue Astrocyte, wrote Tokyo University a grant for 250 million yen _five years_ before the Karma Network came online as a prototype. The two have to be connected."

Akane studied Kurou Yamato's smiling face. She had to suppress a shiver of dislike. _He looks like Makishima. In fact, I'd bet anything that he's criminally asymptomatic._ The photographs had been taken throughout Yamato's life, but they all had one thing in common: the smile that was perpetually on Kurou's face never reached his eyes.

"So Kurou Yamato might hold the key to Sibyl," Akane said.

"Right," Gu-sung replied. "If you want to crack any system, it's best to go back to the early days, when the project was just an experiment, the code was sloppy, and the standards lax. If we can find early source code for the Karma Network, then I'm sure I can use it against Sibyl."

"Where do we start?"

"As I said, most everything related to Kurou Yamato is encrypted, but there are a few leads here. I have his home address from when he was a young man. I also have another address, but I'm not getting any results when I search for it. You'll have to check it out on foot."

"Got it."

"I'm printing out a hard-copy now. Take it."

The printer next to Akane's elbow rumbled into life, and she jumped. After taking the sheet of paper it spat out and scanning the contents, she folded it neatly and put it into her pocket. Then she stood and went over to check the door.

"Are we done? Shion could be here at any minute."

"Give me just a few more seconds. I'm seeing some discrepancies here..."

The hacker finally gave her the go-head to shut down the laptop and plug Shion's computers back into the Cymatic Grid. Akane completed the connections as quickly as possible and did her best to disguise the missing padlock under the desk. Then, fitting the laptop under her arm, she double-checked the Data Hive for any signs that there had been an intrusion.

 _Looks good,_ she thought, and then left the server room, being mindful to lock the door on her way out. _And now it's my turn to do some old-fashioned policework._

* * *

The tombstone was a shard of gray steel, a stretched triangle, that had been driven into the ground with great force. _Like a shuriken thrown by a giant,_ Akane thought. Yakushima Cemetery provided elegant mausoleums and sitting-rooms for the rich and dearly departed, with sixteen acres of wooded private land, held in trust by a foundation administered by the relatives of the very same men and women who slumbered beneath the soil.

"It's not what you'd expect from someone who looks like that crazy Senguji guy," Kagari volunteered from his place clasped around Akane's wrist.

Akane pushed the tip of her boot into the wet soil and dislodged an earthworm, which wriggled to and fro until it reached another clump of dirt and vanished. Kagari was right. Kurou Yamato had given his mother and father a home for the afterlife fit for a pharaoh. The size of a small house, the marble structure rose three stories high by aid of Greek columns, and carried an ever-present scent of incense on the wind. _Lilac,_ she thought—probably it came from vents hidden within those same columns.

"It's nice of him," she remarked, and went to sit on the steps leading up to Arinobu's mausoleum. From there she had a good view of the simple tombstone that Kurou had selected for himself. It was in a decidedly unassuming section of the cemetery, with only an old oak tree for company. There were few other graves nearby.

"Let's not make the guy into a saint," Kagari said. "He _did_ go on to create the Sibyl System, remember."

"I know that," Akane said softly. "But he must have felt in his heart that it was the right thing to do for humanity. What would you have done if you had the opportunity to banish all murder and hatred from society, to make people _trust_ each other? For a long time, I believed in the System and all that it stood for. I can't help but feel that Kurou Yamato did, too."

Kagari made a noncommittal sound.

Akane gazed curiously at the empty hillside. "It's odd, though," she said slowly.

"What is?"

"There's no grave marker for his wife." Her eyes widened. "You don't suppose she could still be alive, do you?"

"Sorry to burst your bubble, but Choe showed me most of the files he discovered in the MWPSB database. Yamato was a lifelong bachelor. Had a few flings here and there, but never settled down."

"Oh," she said. "That's sad."

"Maybe."

The wind picked up, sending a cool fall breeze across Akane's face. She closed her eyes and inhaled deeply. The scent of pine cones and grass filled her lungs. _Well, this was a bust._ With a disappointed sigh, she climbed to her feet, dusted off her behind, and began to trudge back up the hillside. The oak tree shifted in the wind, its branches swaying as if it were conducting some forest symphony not audible to human ears. Both leads had gone nowhere—Yamato's house was now a museum, and his gravestone was—

Akane stopped in mid-walk. She turned to stare at the oak tree, her brow furrowing. _It can't be…_

"What is it?" Kagari asked.

She shook her head and walked back down the hill to stare up at the tree from her original vantage point. _It is, isn't it?_ Her eyes went from Kurou's tombstone to Arinobu's mausoleum, then to the oak tree—which formed a perfect triangle with the others.

"Kagari, those pictures of Kurou that Choe found in the database," Akane said quickly. "The middle one, taken when he was a young man, standing in front of that building. There was a symbol behind him. What did it look like?"

"Yeah, it was like a big triangle, right? With vines growing around it, I think."

Akane approached the oak tree and studied it. She circled it, gazing up into its branches, feeling its roots beneath her feet. _It has to mean something,_ she thought, and reached the rear of the tree. She paused for a moment, one hand resting against the bark, before continuing around—

 _There._

A small copper plaque had been fused into the trunk of the oak tree. Akane read from it: _Mayumi Yamato, beloved daughter of Kaori and Arinobu. Sister to Kurou. She will live in our hearts forever._

"A sister, huh? How come that didn't show up in the MWPSB database?"

Akane shook her head. "Choe did say that most of the files relating to Kurou Yamato and his company were encrypted by somebody."

"But why erase his sister from all of his records? What could she have done?"

Those were good questions, Akane thought. There _must_ have been a reason that the records concerning Mayumi Yamato's very existence had been scrubbed clean. "She's connected to it all somehow. I can feel it."

"We can ask Choe to re-run the search, see if there are any aliases she used," Kagari suggested. "Maybe something from her early career or university years."

"Agreed," Akane said.

 _As much as I hate to admit it, Makishima was right. Kurou Yamato holds the key to defeating the Sibyl System._

* * *

"Jeez, does Shion ever show up for work?"

The voice came from Akane's wrist, and in reply, she gave it a thump. "Be _quiet,_ Kagari."

After checking the Grid cable under the desk, Akane was relieved to see that didn't appear to have been tampered with. She quickly set up the battered old laptop—which, for some reason she couldn't understand, had a fruit on the lid—and connected it to the MWPSB database. Choe, when he 'awoke,' was less than happy.

"This is a bad idea, Tsunemori," he said in cold voice. "First rule of hacking the MWPSB: _don't return to the scene of the crime._ "

"I _am_ a part of the MWPSB," Akane pointed out. "If it makes it easier for you, think of it as the Public Safety Bureau investigating itself."

"It does not make it better."

"Look, just search the database for anything about Mayumi Yamato, all right?" Akane began to pace the Data Hive, her fingers knitted together and her shoulders slightly hunched. "I can _feel_ it, Choe. She's the key."

"It's true that this is Akane-chan's gut instinct," Kagari put in, "but this is the chick that Kogami said would one day become a great detective, and I'm pretty sure he knew what he was talking about."

"I'm doing this against my better judgment," the hacker grumbled, and the laptop's screen dimmed as he began communing with the MWPSB's network.

As before, it was nerve-wracking for Akane. She poked her head out of the door multiple times as Choe scanned millions of public records and census files, cross-referencing from every possible source. _We're pushing our luck, trying to do this twice._ She drifted over to Shion's red couch, where, forgetting about its usual purpose, she lowered herself into its plush embrace with a weary sigh.

After what seemed to be an hour, but which her watch claimed to be merely eight minutes, Choe said, "Here."

Akane fairly leapt up and catapulted herself over the back of the sofa. "You found her?"

"No, but I found her obituary—which is the _only_ document concerning Kurou's sister in the entire database. She's been wiped clean, not a trace left."

Akane sagged into Shion's chair. "What does it say?"

 _"The Board of Regents of Tokyo University wishes it to be known that Dr Mayumi Yamato, faculty member of the University and Chair of the Department of Neurology, has passed away at the age of 39. The discoverer of several groundbreaking theories related to the field of cyberization, Dr Yamato was highly regarded by her colleagues and loved by her students. She is survived by her brother, Kurou Yamato. Services are to be held in the University's Jaeger Hall on November 16_ _th_ _, 2079."_

"She was a scientist," Akane said slowly.

"Apparently she discovered a lot of stuff that we take for granted now," Kagari said. "You never know, her work might have made Toyohisa Senguji's crazy eyeballs possible."

"This was a waste of time," Choe said. "Disconnect the laptop and let's get out of here. I'm shutting down the network link now."

Akane nodded, still preoccupied by what they'd just learned. It had to fit together somehow—what were the chances that Yamato went on to found the Sibyl System and just _happened_ to have a sister who was an expert in the very same theories that made Sibyl possible?

 _There must be a link._

She was crouched under the desk, reconnecting Shion's computer to the MWPSB network, when the lights went off, casting the room into pitch blackness. Akane jerked upright, banged her head on the underside of the desk, cursed loudly, and wobbled to her feet.

"What happened?" she demanded.

She was feeling her way across the Data Hive, and had just bumped into the red sofa, when it happened.

 _"Attention: a remote security lockout has been initiated. All doors, windows and ventilation systems have been sealed. Please stand by for further information."_

The sound of steel bolts sliding into place echoed through the Data Hive. Akane stumbled for the door and tried the handle.

It wouldn't budge.

 _Shit._

"I don't usually say this kind of thing," the hacker announced into the darkness. "But I told you so."


	7. Caged

The alarm triggered at six o'clock in the morning and sounded like a Bach cello suite playing for a miniature concert hall. Shion twisted her naked body and stretched, reaching out with one hand to trigger the switch above the headboard that would silence the impromptu performance. The sheets clinging to her legs were rumpled, as though two tigers had fought for territory in the waning hours—an apt description of the night's entertainments, she thought with a slow smile. _He looks naive, but he's stronger than he seems. I may keep him around._ Her skin was lightly beaded with sweat, and red marks (teeth marks?) ornamented her cream-colored skin in concentric patterns around her arms, thighs, and breasts.

"What was that?" a sleepy voice asked from beside her.

Shion ran gentle fingers over the sharp curve of the man's hip bone. It was accentuated by his thin physique. In reflex at her touch, he gave a slight jerk, but then smiled up at her through lidded eyes.

"Nothing," she said, and pressed a kiss to his shoulder.

"Let me guess," he said dryly. "You've received an urgent message and now must go sit in front of your computer for six hours, tracking down latent criminals."

Shion shrugged. "It's my job," she murmured, and with a graceful slide out of bed, she began to hunt for her clothes. They seemed to have been tossed into each corner of the room. She found her skirt wrapped up in a pair of slacks and a holstered Dominator.

Arishima sat up and watched her dress with an unreadable expression marring his pretty face. Was it jealousy? _It can't be—not after one night!_ "Will I see you again?"

 _Oh, you can count on it._ Aloud, she said, "I enjoyed last night. Did you?"

The rookie blew out a sharp breath, his cheeks reddening.

"I'll take that as a yes," said Shion with a laugh.

When she had gotten herself into a mostly presentable state, Shion paused by the mirror beside the door and studied her reflection. She began to fix her hair.

"You're beautiful."

"Do you like Yayoi?" she asked absently.

Itaru Arishima frowned, as if he didn't quite understand the meaning of the question. "Yes, she's very pretty," he said, and hesitated. "Though not the friendliest person, at first."

"It takes time for her to warm up to new faces." Satisfied with her appearance, Shion snagged an unopened bottle of champagne from the bucket by the door. The ice had long since melted into a pool of room-temperature tap water.

"That's true for some people. Why do you ask?"

"If you'd like, you can have both of us tonight."

The rookie Inspector's mouth dropped open, and he stared at Shion in disbelief.

 _Perfect,_ Shion thought, and with a last look to admire his disheveled appearance, she left the bedroom.

* * *

Akane Tsunemori didn't like going to the zoo; she thought it was terribly cruel for the animals to be locked away like so many priceless treasures, even if they _seemed_ happy. To inflict such pain on defenseless creatures, she felt, was a barbarous throwback to the era preceding the advent of Psycho-Passes and the Sibyl System.

But as she sat helplessly in the darkness, it seemed as if she had no choice but to learn intimately what life in a cage would be like. _There must be a way out. I have one of the best hackers in the world locked in here with me, and Kagari and I are both members of the Public Safety Bureau. There must be_ something _we can do._ However, despite how many times she told herself that, her words didn't change the solidity of the bars that barricaded them inside Shion's office.

"Can you trigger the fire alarm?" Kagari asked from his spot on her wrist, and Akane's lips drew back. She was getting awfully tired of his suggestions, which were invariably things that Choe had thought of already. She had half a mind to deactivate the wristband, but she couldn't find the power switch in the darkness.

"Yes, but what would that accomplish?" Gu-sung countered. "Unless making Tsunemori miserable is your primary concern."

"Maybe it would short-circuit the security system," the Enforcer theorized hopefully.

"Perhaps—water does tend to react poorly with electronics." The hacker let a pregnant pause fill the room. "Oh, by the way, Shusei, where do you suppose I am _right now?_ "

It took a few seconds for Kagari to get it, but then he sighed and grumbled, "In a laptop. Yeah, yeah. Nevermind."

Akane lowered herself onto the couch facing the door and folded her hands in her lap. Appearing almost as if she were deep in prayer for divine intervention, she closed her eyes and adopted the meditative breathing techniques that Professor Saiga had taught her and Kogami. _There's no point in clouding my Psycho-Pass over nothing, even if that's technically impossible for me. I'll just wait for the security team to get here, and then…_ Well, she wasn't sure what she would do then, but she'd think of something. She tried to swallow, but couldn't summon enough saliva, so she settled for wiping her mouth with the sleeve of her uniform.

The hacker's voice rang out in the darkness, strained and commanding. "I hear someone. Be quiet."

Akane closed her eyes—a meaningless act, what with the thick veil of darkness that surrounded them, but it seemed to help her hear better, regardless—and tilted her head to listen. The sounds that permeated Nona Tower were hushed and distant, mainly comprised of the hum of the A/C ducts and the almost imperceptible swaying of the giant skyscraper, causing microshifts in the metal skeleton of the enormous structure… But then she heard _something_ else—a staccato echo against the floor outside, almost like… heels?

She was about to voice her theory to her companions when the unmistakable sound of a key entering a lock came from the door, seeming all the louder for being the only sound they'd heard in nearly an hour. Akane began to stand, her hand grasping out into the darkness, when the door abruptly swung open, flooding the server room with blinding light.

Akane shut her eyes and shielded her face with her crook of her elbow. "Who's there?" she demanded.

" _Scanning for targets. Target acquired; processing."_

Akane seized her own Dominator by instinct, but kept herself from drawing it—doing so would initiate an immediate incident report with the Sibyl System, something she definitely didn't want to do. The other Dominator said something else that she couldn't make out, but evidently it wasn't an authorization for firing, because she was still standing there with her vital organs in a solid rather than gaseous or liquid form. She could just make out the hazy bluish glow of a Dominator in its default configuration, and the outline of a tall figure standing behind it.

" _Akane?"_ The sound of heels walking briskly on tile. Akane, still blinking away tears in the bright glare, braced herself. "What are you doing here?"

A strong hand took her by the chin, and Akane opened her eyes to see Shion Karanomori staring quizzically down at her.

" _Shion!_ I'm sorry about this. We—" Akane hesitated, with a glance at the table where the laptop still sat half-opened. "I mean, _I_ must have accidentally triggered one of your security programs. I was just in here doing some analysis of…" She floundered around helplessly for a likely subject "… of the electrical disturbances that Yayoi noticed in the Warehouse District. It turns out we were wrong—it really _was_ just a sensor anomaly. Isn't that interesting?"

The data analyst studied Akane with a skeptical frown and holstered the Dominator in a rather clumsy motion—it took her a few tries to get the barrel lined up with the holster, the same mistake Akane had made dozens of times as a rookie Inspector. Then she went to sit at her desk, and with a few deft keystrokes she logged into her computer and called up the standard PSB security program. Akane hovered over her shoulder, feeling her face grow pale as Shion began a full sweep of her network.

 _She knows._

When the scan finshed, Shion made a thoughtful noise and tapped her chin with a long fingernail. Then, with a glance at Akane's white face, she slid her chair back and peered under the desk at the broken padlock. She leaned back in her chair and idly ran her fingertips over the trackpad on Choe's laptop. She studied the device for a few long moments, then looked a silent question at Akane.

The moment seemed to stretch on into a microscopic eternity. Akane tensed, her mind racing. _Why is she looking at me like that? Shouldn't she be calling security?_ A flood of hope broke its levees and went pouring down her spine, to be followed just as quickly by what felt like ice. Shion was working with Sibyl. _Why won't she say something?_

"What are you—" Akane began angrily.

Shion raised a finger to her lips, then nodded meaningfully toward the Dominator that hung at her waist. Akane paused. _Come to think of it, where_ did _Shion get that Dominator? She's not supposed to have access to—_

"Why don't we take a walk together, you and I," and Shion nodded toward the open door, "to the cafeteria, Akane-chan, where we can discuss your analysis?"

Now she was _really_ confused. Shion rose and gracefully beckoned for Akane to join her, stopping only long enough to place the Dominator and its holster onto her desk, then went striding through the door—just as if she hadn't discovered irrefutable proof that one of the PSB's Senior Inspectors was illegally accessing the Bureau's protected database.

Akane scooped up the laptop and followed the data analyst into the bright, and, it seemed to her, accusatory sunlight. Hours had passed since they'd been locked in the Hive; it was nearing afternoon, the sunlight coming down at a nearly vertical angle. She blinked several times to clear her vision and quickly followed Shion, who was already halfway down the hall.

"Now," Shion said when Akane drew even with her, and with a glance down the hallway to ensure that they wouldn't be overheard, "what _exactly_ were you doing in my office, Akane-chan?"

 _Can I afford to trust her?_ Akane tried to empty her expression of any tells and looked at the floor tiles as she walked, her eyes tracing over each seam as if she were deep in thought. _But can I afford_ not _to? She might take offense and turn me in. Like it or not, she holds all the cards._

"I was accessing the citizen files for Mayumi Yamato," Akane said carefully, and thought, _Let's see what she makes of that._

For the briefest of moments, genuine surprise crossed Karanomori's beautiful face, then her usual calm mask reasserted itself. She frowned, and it was _her_ turn to appear lost in contemplation.

"Do you know who that is?"

Shion gave her a sidelong look. "I do, but I wonder how _you_ do, Akane—and what you plan to do with that information."

Akane took a deep breath. _If I'm wrong, then I'm signing my own death warrant, but it hardly matters now._ "I'm thinking of a change in careers. The Public Safety Bureau might not be the right fit for me." She left unmentioned the fact that a career, once chosen by the Sibyl System, could never be changed—to do so would imply that the System had made an error. She waited a moment, then added, "Or for anyone in Japan."

They had reached the junction leading to the escalators. Shion paused there, evidently digesting her words, and then without saying anything headed into a nearby restroom. Akane followed her into it, trepidation making her almost lose her grip on Choe's laptop. She caught it before the plastic wedge went tumbling to the floor.

When she poked her head into the restroom, a bright white oasis of tile and scented soaps, she saw the data analyst walking its length, ensuring that every stall was unoccupied. When she had done so to her satisfaction, Shion beckoned Akane over to the last one with a long lacquered fingernail.

Akane approached, hesitation broadcasting from her every movement. "What are you doing, Shion?"

" _Be quiet."_ Shion glared at her, brown eyes practically throwing sparks, and put her red-lipped mouth very close to Akane's ear. "Are you aware of what you're doing? How close you are to drawing attention to yourself? Why didn't you come to me first?"

"I didn't know," Akane whispered back. "I thought you were loyal to Sibyl. I didn't know who I could trust. I'm sorry."

The blonde analyst shook her head. "Now that we've said the unsayable, I can tell you that I have _also_ thought of a change in career, but I never thought it would be possible—at least not in my lifetime." Her gaze seemed to probe Akane's thoughts with as much implacable authority as a Hue check scanner. "Now, what have you learned so far? Who are you working with?"

Akane tried to speak in a roundabout way. "Kogami's best friend. He's still alive. He was..." She searched for the right words. _"Invited_ into our boss's house."

Shion's eyebrows lifted a fractional amount. "But Kogami shot him. The incident report said that he died in the hyper-oat fields."

Akane nodded. "He _was_ shot, but he was airlifted here. His body didn't survive, but they managed to save his brain, which was all they really wanted anyway. He's one of _them_ now." Akane made a face to demonstrate what she thought of that kind of life. Judging from Shion's repulsed expression, the other woman seemed to share her sentiment. "His friend, the hacker, is with me. It was his idea to access the database."

"Tell your friend that he's a good hacker, but coming back here again was a foolish idea," said Shion with a scowl. "When you saw the encrypted files the first time, wasn't it clear that their family was protected?"

"Coming back was my idea—we _had_ to know who she was," Akane said with a sheepish glance down at the laptop. She could practically feel Choe's irritation radiating from the plastic. "Kogami's friend thinks she had something to do with Sibyl."

Shion's lips twisted as if she'd bitten into a lemon—and somehow, Akane thought with a small amount of pique, she managed to appear gorgeous even doing _that_. "She did, but you won't find that in any Ministry database." The data analyst hesitated. "If you really want to learn more about her, go to the old Tokyo Public Library—not the CommuField one, the physical one with paper books. Ask the librarian for a day pass to the historical archive. Access there is usually restricted to registered historians and journalists, but an Inspector with the MWPSB should be able to get in. You'll find some articles about her in the newspapers. Look in the obituaries."

"She was famous, then?"

Shion glanced toward the restroom door, looking as nervous as Akane had ever seen her. "Famous? Hardly. There are very few people who remember her name. And now you're one of the unlucky few." Shion shook her head slowly. "Just hope that Sibyl doesn't decide to take a peep inside your head for the next few days. You'd better hurry."

Akane shook her head. "How do _you_ know all this, Shion?"

Shion smiled. "Your hacker friend isn't the only one good enough to go poking through the Ministry database without leaving tracks behind. I learned about Mayumi before her records were wiped."

"When did that happen?"

"Ten years ago. I was in university at the time. It was probably a bad idea—what I found there certainly didn't help my Psycho-Pass." The data analyst sighed. "Go now, Akane-chan. And don't invite your _friend_ back. It's not safe for him here."

"Okay, we'll leave." Akane gave the data analyst a quick hug. "Thanks, Shion."

When she paused by the restroom door to wave, she noticed Shion unashamedly sizing her up with a small smile and a raised eyebrow. Akane flushed.

"Let's have lunch sometime soon, Inspector," Shion called. "Just the two of us."

Akane waved. "Yeah, whatever, thanks!"

 _She just can't help it, can she?_

* * *

The restaurant on the ground floor of the Astrocyte had been Makishima's first experience of the Sibyl System, and in a way, it still functioned as a soothing locale when he wished to unwind with a glass of wine and convivial company. He knew that it served such a purpose for another Sibyl member, too, and as he stepped through the lobby, he saw his quarry dining alone under starlight.

The waiter was at his side in moments, having appeared out of thin air. Makishima no longer jerked with surprise when that happened. He gave the man—who was, of course, not really a man, nor really a waiter—a pleasant nod of greeting and ordered a pot of fresh green tea, just shy of boiling, and two mugs. When the waiter vanished, he wandered over to the patio, approaching Masuda from an oblique angle, keeping out of sight for as long as possible. The man seemed intent on avoiding him whenever practicable, and the day before had actually got up and walked out of the sauna when Makishima entered.

 _He's still upset by my remarks concerning Ms Sawaki._ Makishima schooled his features to remove their wolfish cast and strode calmly into the moonlight. Today he would be a dear friend ready to supply a needed shoulder. _This confirms my theory. He loves the girl deeply._

"Are these stars accurate?" Makishima asked into the silence, and the Sibyl programmer jumped and looked over his shoulder. When he saw who it was, his lips drew back. "I ask because, while I recognize a few constellations—in fact, I see a dog that Choe showed me once—I don't believe I've ever seen a sky quite like this one."

"It is highly accurate," said Masuda with a sneer, and began to dab at his lips with a napkin. His plate was still mostly uneaten.

"You know, this reminds me of something Evelyn told me," Makishima said, and instantly the programmer was arrested in his attempt to rise. He looked at Makishima for a few moments, bitterness making his features ugly, before replying with a put-upon tone.

"What did she tell you, Shogo?"

"That one can only fall in love under the light of a full moon." Makishima laughed and spread his hands. "I don't believe I've ever heard such nonsense before, but the absurdity of it stuck in my head. A foolish notion, don't you agree?"

Masuda seemed to war with himself for a few moments, then gave up. _And the puppet ceases struggling._ Makishima watched him silently, eyes intent, studying, observing. The programmer took a half-full glass of red liquid in hand and sipped at it. He eyed Makishima over the rim and said, "Would you like some? It's a Bordeaux, from 18—"

"Yes?"

"Eighteen- _something_. I don't remember. Ask the waiter." Masuda shrugged, and his sad eyes fixed on Makishima almost unwillingly. "She really said that? Evelyn, I mean?"

"Yes." Makishima invited himself to a seat across from the programmer. "She's quite a romantic."

"Oh?" Masuda glared at him. "You would know that, would you?"

"We dined together," Makishima began, and held up a forestalling hand when Masuda began to sputter. "Half a moment, please." He eyed the programmer sternly, and in a few moments the force of his personality quelled the other man into submission. "As I said, we dined together in her quarters and talked for hours. We didn't sleep together, if that's what you're wondering."

This statement seemed to half-reassure, half-outrage Hiroki Masuda. He squinted at Makishima before taking another sip of wine. He seemed to be fashioning his reply in the manner of a medieval blacksmith—with forge fires brightly lit, and hammer and tongs banging away, pounding the glowing metal until each imperfection was minutely diminished, a small degree improved. "You don't—you don't love her, then?" He blinked several times, rapidly, like a frog. "Makishima?"

"I don't."

The relief that overcame Masuda would probably be visible with a telescope from the moon, Makishima thought. The man sagged against the table and stared into his half-eaten chicken dish, his brown eyes relieved and despairing at the same time.

"I can tell that you have feelings for her," Makishima continued, when the silence called for an interlude, "and as I consider you a friend, Hiroki, I would never dream of leading her on. I told her as much."

Masuda blinked sudden tears from his eyes. "You did?"

Makishima nodded.

The programmer inhaled a ragged breath and seemed to inflate slightly, as if someone had connected him to a balloon and was pumping in air. He sat upright and blinked at the stars, and then at Makishima, whom he looked at with a great deal more warmth than a few minutes before.

 _Almost time,_ Makishima thought. _He's very close._

"Sir?"

The two men turned as one to face the waiter, who had appeared like a sudden gust of wind at their table. With the graceful movements of an experienced server, the man cleared a space of dishes and placed Makishima's pot of green tea on the tablecloth. He placed a mug in front of each man, bowed, and left as he had come.

"It's green tea," Makishima murmured as he poured himself some. It left the spout with a little cloud of steam, its color honey-yellow combined with the green of a tarnished copper coin. "Would you like some?"

In response, Masuda held out his mug. _And there it is._ Makishima sighed with satisfaction as he poured tea for the other man. _He's ready._

"I've told Evelyn that you have feelings for her," he said, and closed his eyes to inhale of the tea. "And that you're a good friend of mine."

Masuda watched him breathe in the tea, and did the same. He took a slow sip. "Thank you, Shogo. I was afraid that you were..."

"Interested in her?" Makishima smiled and shook his head. "As you remarked before, she's not my type."

The programmer nodded and took another sip of tea. He seemed to find the taste agreeable.

"I have been wondering something, though," Makishima said slowly, as if he'd just remembered a half-forgotten subject. "Could you clear it up for me?"

"Of course, ask anything you'd like."

"What are the Okaba Street Trials? Evelyn spoke of them during our conversation, and it seems like, well..." Makishima spread his hands. "Everyone but me in the Sibyl System knows what they are."

Masuda blew on his tea to cool it further and took another slow sip. He stared down at the tablecloth, his eyebrows slightly scrunched together. "It's a cyberization project," he explained finally. "Okaba Street for the headquarters of the research company that develops most of our neural interfaces. You could say it's a partnership between a few Sibyl members and a company on the outside—"

"What company?" Makishima interrupted.

"Senguji Industries."

Makishima blinked. " _The_ Senguji? The company that Toyohisa Senguji founded?"

"That's right," Masuda replied. "As I was saying, Senguji Industries was responsible for the contracting work on the Sibyl System—they built all of the physical interfaces, the Nutrient Arms, the cerebrospinal fluid baths, the filters and exchangers… Hell, even Nona Tower. They had all of the necessary technical expertise to help the Japanese government realize the vision of Sibyl."

"What did they get in return?"

Masuda shrugged. "Where do you think Mr Senguji got his fortune? Senguji Industries was small fry before the Sibyl contract, I think the third largest cyberization company in Japan."

 _If I had known that Toyohisa was working with Sibyl…_ Makishima sighed and tamped down his irritation. He sipped green tea. _His death would have been at my hands—and far more gruesome._ He felt some degree of satisfaction that Shinya Kogami had been the one to take Senguji's life, however, as though he had been acting out Makishima's will. _As it should be._

"The Okaba Street Trials you keep hearing about are just a project we've had going with Senguji Industries for several years," Masuda continued. "It's under Mr Chambers' express direction."

"It sounds important," Makishima said.

Masuda shrugged. "Mr Chambers thinks it is, so you're right, it is. He's only given me hints about it, but from what I gather, it will enable the next step in human evolution."

"Meaning…?"

Masuda leaned across the table and said in a whisper, "Meaning we could escape the confines of this… this _prison_ and go out into the world again."

"How?" Makishima demanded.

"I'm not supposed to say," Masuda said evasively.

 _He feels the strings again._ Makishima nodded and poured them both more tea. "If you'd like, Hiroki, I can arrange a date for you and Evelyn."

The programmer's mouth fell open. He stared at Makishima with yearning in his eyes. Makishima saw the calculation going on between his eyes, saw the immense respect the man had for Mr Chambers warring with the fundamental impulse for procreation and lust. He had to hold back a smile.

 _This will be the decisive moment._

Masuda gazed into Makishima's eyes for a long moment, then sighed and looked down at the table. "What would you like to know? There are some things I'm not supposed to speak of, you understand..."

For a moment it was just as if Makishima were back in the real world among the criminal element of Japan, finding the diamonds in the rough, polishing them to a brilliant sheen and sending them out into the world, where their glittering magnificence could shape life and death into an art form to last the ages.

 _This is what I was meant to do._

* * *

The Tokyo Public Library seemed like a relic of pre-war tranquility, a glimpse of the old life as viewed through a smeared windowpane: the style of construction American, with the curious confluence of architectural impulses that characterized the mid-century Japanese building—columned, regal, and yet seemingly delicate too, like the shiny jewel-like exterior of an insect that nevertheless concealed great strength. The steps ascended to a pair of huge wooden doors, which were open to let in the sunlight. Ascending them, Akane felt like a worshipper climbing the steps of a ziggurat, come to offer sacrifices to a capricious god.

"Let's hope they didn't wipe the newspapers, too," Kagari said from her wrist.

Akane nodded and made her way past those giant doors. "It's unlikely, I think. The world that Sibyl exists in is the world of computers. They seem to feel that the physical world is beneath them. It should be one of their blind spots."

The library was vast, in an airy, gossamer-skinned sort of way, as if it were really just a giant cloth tent wrapped around a steel skeleton. The ceiling rose and fell in organic and hypnotic fashion, exposing wooden beams that crisscrossed from each side of the building; huge rectangular skylights let in plenty of natural light. It was split into two levels, with spiral staircases of wrought iron at each corner of the central courtyard, where there were couches and armchairs for comfortable reading amid small trees and flowers that seemed to flow in and around every chair, almost like rivers of vegetation. It was the sort of building that didn't exist any more in Sibyl's Japan, and arguably for good reason—with the possibility of custom holographic surroundings for any occasion, why would a builder create a fixed environment that precluded changes in style and taste? Most public and private spaces these days were bare concrete, with simple, functional furnishings and a minimum of ornamentation, like her own apartment.

Akane made her way over to the receptionist's desk, where an elderly Japanese woman was perched precariously on a stool and squinting down at a tablet displaying a CommuField gossip column. Her hair poured in white ringlets around her heart-shaped face, and she looked exceptionally healthy for someone who was probably an octogenarian. She peered up through large reading glasses as Akane approached, seemed to size her up by the cut of her uniform and find her wanting.

"May I help you, young lady?" the librarian asked.

Akane smiled and bowed. "Yes, ma'am. I'd like to access some of the research materials held in the historical archive, please."

The old woman raised a quizzical eyebrow. "What for? You aren't a journalist, are you?" Her gaze took in Akane's rumpled jacket and windblown hair, and seemed to say, _Yes, definitely not a journalist._

Akane drew herself up to her full height, which still left her gazing _up_ at the librarian and feeling rather foolish. She scowled and drew out her MWPSB badge. "I'm an Inspector with the Public Safety Bureau, ma'am, and my request is connected to an official investigation. I'm afraid I can't say any more than that."

The librarian studied her badge for a few long moments, as if she would contest its authenticity, but then shrugged and ducked down to grasp something stored under the desk. What she withdrew and placed in front of Akane was a ring holding a single key of the old-fashioned type—with no logic built into it, the key was simply a bit of shaped metal, with grooves on one side and a flat edge on the other. Akane held it up to the light and studied it closely, fascinated.

"Those were before your time, I'm sure," the librarian sniffed.

"But not before yours, I'm sure," Akane retorted sweetly.

The woman scowled at her and gestured to the far side of the library. "The historical archive is in the back. Look for a door that says _Employees Only._ That key will let you in. Go straight back and you'll see cabinets. That's what you want."

"Thank you."

Akane pocketed the key and made her way across the library, stopping halfway through the courtyard to close her eyes and inhale the fragrance of a flower whose petals curved in a gentle arc over the path. A feeling of warmth seemed to fill her, and she smiled. It was funny—she often spent hours in the bathtub after work, trying fruitlessly to relax the knots in her muscles while Candy ran a meditation program for her. The scent of red clover and apple blossom would fill the apartment—synthesized by the computer, of course, but chemically identical to the real thing. But smelling the conjured incense didn't give her the sense of deep well-being that these real flowers did.

 _Maybe we've lost more than we realize, replaced too much of what was real with artificial substitutes._ She continued across the library, through large stacks filled with crumbling paperbacks from the 2040s and cocoa-colored leatherbound books from an even more distant past—some, she saw, dated to the 1970s. Ancient times indeed.

She found the _Employees Only_ sign stuck on a metal door that squeaked rustily when she unlocked it and stepped through. The corridor that stretched before her was clearly part of the building's circulatory system, meant for maintenance purposes—the walls here were simple brick that had been painted over dozens of times, and the layers of paint now clung thickly white over the mortar. There were no holographic generators _here_. The corridor opened onto a large room with a stained cement floor. The sole light source was a tube-style fluorescent bulb that gave off a cold greenish hue. Gray cabinets, the height of a man, grew like polyps from the floor; there were at least three dozen of them, stretching off into the pea-green darkness, each featuring a small handwritten label and a pull-out drawer. Akane approached one of them and read: _The Hokkaido Evening Post._ She went down the row of cabinets and examined the other labels—each bank contained a different city broadsheet, and in total they amounted to some three or four dozen, from all over Japan.

 _Shion said it would be written in the obituaries,_ she thought, and opened a drawer at random to peer inside. Autumn leaves stared back at her—dessicated strips of yellowish paper that time and humidity had condensed into so much pulp and mold. She picked up one of the leaves between ginger fingertips and examined it closely, making a face at its flooded-basement odor. The headline seemed incomprehensible to her at first, but then memory stirred of a long-forgotten school lesson.

 _President Turner Addresses Congress; U. S. Declares War Against Sino-Russian Alliance_

Akane let her fingertips draw gentle circles on the faded newsprint. This was _old_ news, sixty years gone at least. She sought the date among the tiny English letters that crowded the page and saw _November 29_ _th_ _, 2039_ written in the upper right corner _._ It _was_ old, dating from before the Sibyl System's conception. Arinobu Yamato would still have been a junior representative in the local prefecture. She slid the scrap of newspaper back into the drawer and looked at its neighboring cabinets, her eyes searching the labels.

"It's sad, isn't it?"

Akane frowned and glanced at her wrist. Her friend sounded unusually introspective, even depressed.

"What is?" she asked.

"Everything that happened after that headline," the Enforcer said, and Akane glanced down at the faded newsprint. "The politicians who wouldn't back down, even though they knew neither side could win the war. And when it started, nobody wanted to be the first to stop."

Shusei had never spoken of his feelings about the war. That was understandable, though—few wanted to think of the past. It was a very Japanese trait, Akane thought, to keep one's eyes fixed firmly on the island. Never look up at the sky or off to the oceans, because in that direction lay four billion reasons for insanity. _Maybe that's one of the reasons why we looked to Sibyl's embrace to comfort us. We felt guilty for watching as the world tore itself apart._ She remembered going to visit the seaside at Shirahama with her mother as a child, watching the tide roll in and out and laughing with childish delight at the ghost crabs that were left behind, their legs sticking out of the sand like the spokes of a buried wheel. That had been during the last years of the third world war, after the nuclear fire burnt itself out, leaving only the remnants of once-proud nations who refused to know when the end was near. Whole civilizations reduced to savagery.

She remembered the boat that landed, too—a lifeboat, painted a crisp white, with red life preservers attached to its hull by rope, and men on it crying out with joyful laughter as they touched soil for the first time in what must have been weeks or months at sea, adrift among the ocean currents.

The local prefecture contacted the Japanese Coast Guard. The cutter that appeared from around the edge of the bay was gray and shark-like, its prow a perfect triangular blade slicing through the water. It had arrived at the beach where Akane and her mother stood, watching the shipwrecked foreigners with uncomprehending curiosity, and disgorged a dozen blank-faced sailors. These men carried weapons, and Akane remembered thinking that the weapons glinted with dark violence in the bright summer sunshine. She'd found it hard to look away.

The confrontation did not last long. The sailors made it clear to the shipwrecked men that they had _not_ found salvation after all. Akane remembered the agony on their faces as the men were forced at gunpoint to return to their lifeboat, given a few meager provisions of food and fresh water, and towed back to sea.

"That's one of the reasons we built the Sibyl System, Kagari," she said, and for a brief moment heard her own voice echoing down the years. Young Akane had been full of enthusiastic zeal, thankful for the opportunity to serve the nation's greatest creation, the invention that had saved Japan from the madness that swept the world like a hurricane. Only through Sibyl's guidance had they survived, she remembered thinking—but at what cost?

"What do you mean?"

"It was because of war that Yamato was able to get Sibyl off the ground. War, and murder, and rape, and violence. It was everything wrong with humanity. That was why we allowed our Psycho-Passes to be monitored by an impartial machine." _Or what should have been an_ _impartial machine,_ she thought bitterly. In reality it had turned out to be the two hundred most psychopathic and twisted minds in all of Japan—a sick joke, really.

Kagari seemed to mull this over for a while. Then he said, "Yeah, but there must be an alternative, Akane. Not war, and not Sibyl. There must be."

"If Makishima's plan works, then I guess we'll find out if there is," Akane replied grimly.

After a great deal of searching, they found the obituaries in the top drawer of the file cabinets along the far side of the room. Cobwebs clung in spidery tendrils to the bricks here, and several times as Akane went from cabinet to cabinet she broke a spiderweb with her face and grimaced. There must have been a flood in the building at some point in the past, probably during the last tsunami, for the water had etched a stratum of orange rust on the bottom drawers, and when opened they offered mounds of rotted paper, dried silt, and a fetid odor that made Akane wrinkle her nose and turn away. She went through each drawer, selecting the likely editions and piling them on a hulking steel desk that a maintenance person had turned into a makeshift workbench—dirty rags, cleaning agents, tools, and replacement lenses for holographic projectors lay scattered on top of its surface. Soon she had six or seven piles of newsprint, each several feet high.

"This is going to take a while," she sighed, and began to scan the first newspaper. The feel of it was unusual in her hands; the texture was coarse and scratchy, almost like tree bark. It was a pleasure, though, to see words bled onto paper using real ink… She felt like an archaeologist, peering into the past, or perhaps even a time-traveler. _It's so weird—the words don't respond when you touch them._ She realized that it had been years since she'd read anything that wasn't a tablet, phone or holo-screen.

"This is going to take more than a _while_ ," Kagari announced, and her wrist-computer dimmed as it deepened into sleep mode. "I'm taking a nap, Akane-chan. Wake me when you've found something."

"Thanks a lot for your help," she replied sarcastically.

"Any time, babe."

Akane rolled her eyes and grabbed the next newspaper. This one dated from the 2020s, and the headlines told of international controversy and the sailing of a Chinese carrier group along the coast of the United States, after an incident involving a collision between a fishing vessel and a guided-missile cruiser a few days before. She flipped to the next newspaper, and the story picked up from there—bickering in the U.N. Security Council and the recalling of ambassadors led to sanctions, and then the arraying of various countries into trading blocs and military alliances. As she read, she saw the seeds of future chaos being sown on the crumbling pages of the _Hokkaido Post_. She wished that she could reach into the newspaper and grab the leaders whose faces stared up at her with high-wattage PR smiles, grab them and _shake_ some sense into them. _Listen to me!_ She wanted to shout. _You're going to kill everybody!_ But their smiles didn't change, and they couldn't hear her.

Hours dragged on. Akane fell into a trance-like state as she read newspaper after newspaper—absorbing all of the past's mistakes, celebrating along with their achievements, and watching with the dread of a witness to a slow-motion car wreck as the global political situation deteriorated in the 2050s. When the first mushroom clouds appeared in full color on the front page of the _Post,_ she stared at them for a few long moments before looking away. She was not surprised. With the benefit of hindsight, and a front row seat for the irrational decisions stretching back decades, she thought it was a wonder that it had taken so long for war to break out.

 _NATO Calls For Coordinated Strikes Over Atlantic Ocean; China Alleges U.S. Lasers Shot Down 'Weather Satellite'_

And soon after:

 _Japan Announces Abrogation of U.S. Defense Treaty, Announces Development Of Computerized Law Enforcement System_

Akane sat up. She looked closely at the last article, which featured a photograph of a smiling Kurou Yamato. But that wasn't what caught her attention—it was the woman standing slightly behind him, her hands folded over her lap, an expression of composed satisfaction on her face. The family resemblance was undeniable. She quickly scanned the article.

 _April 6_ _th_ _, 2070_

 _TOKYO UNIVERSITY_ _—The eyes of the nation are upon Japan's political and business elite as an unprecedented partnership between the Ministry of Defense, led by Gen. Goro Fujibayashi, and the tech sector's Blue Astrocyte Corporation, headed by noted businessman and philanthropist Kurou Yamato, was announced today at a gala in Tokyo University's Jaeger Hall. The project is the result of recent breakthroughs in cyberization, the so-called ability for computers to supplement the essential functions of the human nervous system. Japanese leaders claim that the technology holds out the promise of ensuring social and political harmony in the nation even as countries around the world are overcome by sectarian violence. Prime Minister Edamura says that Project Karma, to be headed by Dr Mayumi Yamato of Tokyo University, eminent scientist and sister of Blue Astrocyte Corporation's Chairman Kurou Yamato, represents the best of Japan's technological know-how, and may hold the key to lasting peace around the world. The two parties will hold a press conference next week at the joint session of the Diet. It is expected that the bill providing funds for the project will pass._

Akane sat back, the newspaper folding over in her hands. Her eyes traced Mayumi Yamato's face, from the rather high forehead to the intelligent gray eyes, to the upward curve of her small nose... She was an attractive woman, Akane thought, but there was definitely a sense that Mayumi Yamato didn't spend an inordinate amount of her life on romance. Her white laboratory coat was wrinkled even in the photograph, and Kurou seemed to be clenching his teeth as he stood beside her, even if he _was_ smiling for the camera.

 _They don't like each other,_ Akane thought with certainty. She couldn't say what made her sure—there was just something about brother and sister that seemed to proclaim no love lost. She wondered whose fault it had been. Was Kurou the stereotypical domineering elder sibling, or was Mayumi the overachiever in the family?

Feeling that she was on the right track, Akane rapidly scanned the headlines, searching for further news about Project Karma. There were several articles in the political section of the _Hokkaido Post_ and the _Tokyo Inquirer_ detailing Blue Astrocyte's winning of government contracts and military partnerships. But the news overall seemed to be firmly concerned with overseas matters, and probably with good reason, she thought.

And then she saw it. Nestled under the pile of newspapers, near the very bottom of the stack, lay a dog-eared edition of the _Post_. The headline, as was to be expected by now, concerned diplomats meeting in Paris over arms control treaties. But as Shion had told her it would, the important bit appeared in the obituary section of the paper.

 _November 1_ _st_ _, 2079_

 _Professor Mayumi Yamato, the originator of cyberization theory, has died today at the age of 39. Afflicted in recent years by mental illness, Dr Yamato was a controversial figure in the field of neurology as well as in the wider business world. As the research and development head of Blue Astrocyte Corporation, Dr Yamato was one of Japan's most powerful women, but conflicts with her brother and former business partner, Kurou Yamato, led to her firing by the Board of Directors of the company she inherited. The last years of her life were consumed by legal battles against the Yamato estate. She recently filed civil suit against her brother, alleging that he presided over illegal activities in his role as Blue Astrocyte's chairman, but before the case could go to trial Dr Yamato tragically took her own life. She is survived by her brother. Services will be held in Tokyo University's Jaeger Hall._

"Kagari," she said slowly. "Wake up."

The wrist computer flashed bright color into her eyes, and then the sound of Kagari's yawn echoed through the room. "What is it, Akane? Find something?"

She pointed the camera lens at the obituary.

There was a moment of silence as Kagari read the article. Then he gave a low whistle.

"It's different," Akane said.

"I know. The obituary in the MWPSB's records didn't say anything about a lawsuit or any mental illness. Choe would have mentioned it if there was."

"I don't think there _was_ any mental illness, Kagari—at least, not on her part. I think Kurou framed her." She bit her lip. "I'm almost certain now that Kurou used her discovery to create the Sibyl System against her will."

The Enforcer's voice sounded somewhat doubtful. "Isn't that a lot to draw from one article? It could be that they were equal partners and old Kurou got a little greedy. What makes you so sure?"

Akane shrugged. "Call it a detective's instinct."

"Don't let Ginoza hear you say that," Kagari muttered. "He'd give you a two-hour lecture about the importance of evidence-based policework."

The obituary was small enough that she could have simply taken a photograph of it with her cellphone, but as a government employee, all of her communications were piped through Sibyl. _That wouldn't be the best idea._ Instead, she carefully tore the article out of the newspaper and slipped it into her purse.

"That's theft, you know," Kagari pointed out as she returned the newspapers to their drawers and prepared to leave. "I'd watch my Psycho-Pass if I were you. You don't want to end up in the kennel with us."

"I'd rather go after Kogami and become a fugitive," she said, and smiled when Kagari laughed.

 _And speaking of which, it's just about time for us to go capture Kogami for Sibyl,_ she thought, and the prospect of seeing her colleague again sent a little thrill of electricity up her spine. _I hope he won't be too mad if I have to shoot him with my Dominator again. It's becoming a habit between us._


	8. Answers

"We don't want any fatalities," Akane said, and glared at the members of her strike team. "Is that absolutely _crystal_ clear?"

The assembled Enforcers gave a massed, "Yes, sir!" Itaru Arishima, she noticed, said it rather half-heartedly. _I'll need to keep an eye on him._

Isao Egusa, one of Division Two's borrowed hounds, raised his hand to speak. The man looked like a walking, talking forest fire—easily topping six and a half feet, said to be the son of a Japanese and a foreigner, he sported delicately coiffed hair of the brightest red. Yet, despite his giant stature, he carried himself with a graceful ease, like a leopard somehow walking easily on stilts. He had a reputation for always choosing to wait until his Dominator reached Lethal Eliminator status during apprehension, though, even going so far as to verbally provoke suspects into raising their Crime Coefficients. He enjoyed the killing, they said.

Akane nodded.

"Who's the target, ma'am?" he asked, politely enough. "Because forgive me for saying so, but I haven't seen a strike force this large since..." His eyebrows drifted slowly upward, as if carted off by helium balloons. "Well, _ever_."

"I was wondering that too," said a young, mousy-looking girl of perhaps nineteen. Nami Chisaka, of Division Six. She was as diminutive as Isao was freakishly large. "This feels like some secret agent shit, you know?" Her large pale eyes blinked excitedly. "I mean, this is cool, right?"

 _Ginoza, forgive me if I was ever half this idiotic as a rookie._ "Are you an actual MWPSB officer?" Akane asked, tone glacial. "This isn't bring your kids to work day, is it?"

Chisaka nodded. Then, as Akane kept staring at her in silence, she slowly shook her head.

"This is serious, people." Akane kept her words clipped and efficient—and intimidating, she hoped. She was consciously emulating Kogami, which was rather ironic considering the purpose of their mission, but he _did_ know how to get rookie Bureau employees into shape—she was evidence of that. She began to pace back and forth, letting her body take up as much space as possible. "Our mission is to rescue an Enforcer by the name of Shinya Kogami from a criminal enclave in the port city of Akita. Intel has already mapped our route in and out. C-22 Ospreys will take us from Nona Tower directly to the strike zone. We'll be wearing full tactical gear and equipped with shock grenades, flashbangs, and restraint nets. And our Dominators, of course. Civilian casualties should be kept to a minimum, but the safety of the target is the highest priority. If you see someone threatening Kogami's life, you take them out. Any questions?"

An Enforcer that Akane didn't recognize raised his hand and said, "Isn't Shinya Kogami that asshole who used to pick fights in the canteen?"

Isao Egusa frowned. "I know who you're talking about—he used to be close with that Sasayama guy, right?"

"That's him." The Enforcer turned to Akane. "Inspector, I know you have your orders, but the guy we're going after is a real pain in the ass. Take my word for it. Can we at least let him break a few bones on the way back?"

Akane looked at Yayoi, whose eyes sparkled with amusement, and began to massage her temples. _Kogami, you really aren't going to make this easy for me, are you?_ The assembled Enforcers began to reminisce about the exploits of Kogami and Sasayama, an apparently fearsome duo who had played practical jokes, picked fights, and thrown food in the cafeteria. _Just perfect. All I need is for someone else to say that Kogami slept with his girlfriend and I'll have a mutiny on my hands before the mission even starts._

"Sibyl _itself_ has given orders that Kogami is not to be harmed during extraction," Akane said levelly. "I'm not exaggerating when I say that his safety is a matter of national importance."

That shut them up, even if Egusa seemed unhappy about it. Akane checked her wristband, where she knew Kagari was listening in and probably crying with laughter just about now. It was still three hours until dawn.

"Listen up, we move out at 0400 hours. Your equipment for this mission has been stowed in your lockers—get it, get suited up, and familiarize yourself with the 3D map of the target, a nightclub near the harbor run by a suspect known as Lor Sam Pau. According to the local Akita authorities we've consulted, he's a notorious black market smuggler, hit man, and dealer in illicit computer code. His nightclub is located in a Cymatic gray zone, so our intel will be spotty at best once we're on the ground, and our Dominators won't function without a direct antenna link to Sibyl, so don't rely on them. Any more questions that _don't_ involve wishing harm on Shinya Kogami?"

Egusa lowered his hand sheepishly. Akane sighed.

"All right, get to it. We'll depart at 0345. Dismissed."

The office began to clear out. Akane waited until there were only a few stragglers remaining—most seemed to be heading for the lockers, as she'd instructed—and then spoke.

"Inspector Arishima, may I have a word in private?"

The rookie hesitated on his way out the door. Seeming somewhat surprised by her request, he waited for a trio of Enforcers to pass by before walking over to her. His Dominator was missing, she noticed, and she couldn't help but take the empty holster under his shoulder as a symbol of life after the Sibyl System. What _would_ they carry as police officers, if not Dominators? She supposed they would have to go back to using bullets, like the revolver that Kogami used to practice shooting at the range.

"Ma'am?"

Up close, Arishima smelled faintly of perfume. Akane took a quick sniff. _Shion's perfume. No surprise there._ His features were classically handsome and cheerful, and for a moment Akane felt as if they could have been two university students asking each other out on a date. He _was_ rather attractive, she had to admit. But there was something about his manner that bothered her. She couldn't put her finger on it, but Itaru Arishima seemed too cavalier about his job for her taste—especially so now that Kogami's life was on the line.

"Itaru, are you fully on board with this mission?" she asked quietly. "I couldn't help noticing that you seemed distracted during the briefing."

He smiled at her, showing chalky, evenly-spaced teeth. "Inspector, I have my orders, as I'm sure we both do. You can rest assured I'll carry them out to the utmost of my abilities."

Akane studied him for a moment. There was just something about him… "Fine. You'd better get ready with the others."

"Yes, Senior Inspector."

When Arishima had gone, leaving Akane alone in the office, she went over to Kogami's desk and sat down. Feeling a tremble course through her body, she put her feet up and tilted the chair back as she'd seen him do dozens of times. Once she felt like a carbon copy of Kogami, she closed her eyes, raised her head up to the ceiling, and _breathed_.

 _If you die, Kogami, I'm going to murder you._

* * *

Shinya Kogami raised one arm over his head, flexed his muscles, and heard a sharp _crack_ resound from his shoulder joint. The sound was accompanied by a sensation not unlike small marbles rolling around inside a hollow cardboard tube. Wincing, he shifted against the hardness of the wooden bench, trying to find some part of his body that _wasn't_ covered in bruises—the _Neosalanx_ didn't offer much in the way of comfortable dining. His tendons seemed to quiver like thin strips of leather that had been stretched out and allowed to dry in the hot sun. His list of discomforts didn't end there—a channel of dull pain ran from his shoulder blade and around his side, to his appendix; under his shirt lay a nasty half-healed scar following roughly the same track. The perp responsible for _that_ souvenir had accomplished his work by taking a meat cleaver to Kogami's jacket, like a mad tailor. It had taken three shots to the belly for the man to go down, and even then he'd taken a swipe at Kogami's leg.

The result of the killing—or murder, if you wanted to look at it that way (Kogami didn't)—was an invitation to join Pau's club as a sort of tame animal, a freak of both nature and the martial arts, who would be willing to inflict glorious pain upon those who happened to displease the crime lord.

Kogami had taken the job. Some of the time he found himself enjoying it. Most of the time, though, he merely existed.

Lor Sam Pau's underlings seemed to look upon Kogami with not as much fear as he'd expected, though there was some of that. But their predominant reaction when he methodically took apart potential challengers to Pau was disgust. Apparently Kogami seemed as bad to them as he thought they were. One night, after a boxing match against a rival crime lord's champion, Kogami had looked into the mirror in the dive's restroom and seen a blood-soaked stranger gaping back at him, face adorned with black bruises, left eye draining yellow fluid, teeth gritted. But what struck him most powerfully was the guy's expression—it was as coldly murderous as any perp he'd shot down with his Dominator. In fact, something about that expression made him think of Shogo Makishima. Not something to improve his mood a great deal.

If Kogami was honest with himself, he would admit that his investigation had hit a dead end months ago. The trail of Makishima's lackeys had led all over Japan before going cold, but the effort had drained his bank account, which he'd liquidated into the form of easily-traded goods, and left him physically frail, sleep deprived, and paranoid. He gave Hue check scanners a wide berth these days.

His last target had been a computer hacker known as the Red Crane, one of Choe Gu-sung's collaborators. The two men had never met in person, but their online association stretched back decades, to Gu-sung's youth in South Korea. There had been hard evidence in the MWPSB computer system of the Red Crane's part in the downing of the Cymatic Grid during the attack on Nona Tower, thus giving Kogami's conscience the go-ahead to take him out. Whenever he killed one of Makishima's henchmen, he ran a moral calculus before doing the deed, and in each case, he felt comfortable with his actions. His barometer for whether a killing was justified or not was if he could look Tsunemori in the eye afterward, and until recently he'd felt confident that he could win a staring contest with her. But the Red Crane had broken something inside him, something that he didn't know _could_ break.

There was no doubt about the man's guilt. The Red Crane had received an encrypted file from Gu-sung over the Sibyl-run CommuField—a brazen act, but not one out of character for a hacker of his confidence—and succeeded in running it on the mainframes of his employer, which just happened to be the prefectural administration of Tottori. The code spread like wildfire through neighboring prefectures due to the privileged nature of the goverment's interconnects, and the net result of his actions had been the complete cessation of all emergency services across many square kilometers of populated Japanese cities and towns. That meant no ambulances, no fire trucks, no autonomous guidance for vehicles. Huge parts of Japan had simply frozen into gridlock, and Kogami had no doubt that dozens, possibly hundreds of people could have died as a result. For that, any pre-Sibyl court would certainly have convicted the man. And that was enough for Kogami.

So Kogami used the last of his funds to track the Crane all over Japan. Somehow, the hacker knew he was being followed. But for all his technical expertise, he didn't have Kogami's nose for the hunt. It took all of his skill as an ex-cop, but he cornered the guy in Akita. The hacker had run into Lor Sam Pau's _Neosalanx_ nightclub and asked the boss there for protection. Apparently the two had an association going back years.

Kogami shifted on the bench, gritting his teeth as his shoulder flared with pain again. _Hope it's not getting infected,_ he thought. That would be dangerous—as a fugitive, he couldn't just walk into a hospital and say that he needed treatment. They would scan his ID and the Cymatic Grid would scream out to Sibyl that Shinya Kogami had been found. The alarm and all that it entailed would rocket across Japan at the speed of light. He had no doubt that some of his Enforcer colleagues would be at his doorstep within thirty minutes.

So he had to _hope_ that he didn't have an infection. Hope, and maybe pray.

 _Tsunemori might help me, if I asked her nicely enough._ Now _there_ was a conundrum. His former Inspector occupied Kogami's thoughts more than usual lately, though he tried to suppress them with over-the-counter sedatives. He dreamed of her, sometimes. Good dreams. But when he woke up and saw that she wasn't in bed next to him, saw that he was still in his 4,000-yen-a-night coffin rental by the sewage treatment plant, he died a little inside.

He'd thought there might have been something in their future. Something big. He didn't dare dream of marriage, of course. But companionship of a sort? Perhaps. He'd slowly lost his mind after Sasayama's death, fallen into a gutter spiral before Akane Tsunemori showed up in the rain looking ridiculous in her high heels and off-the-rack duds, and proceeded to lecture him on how to do policework—then shot him with a Dominator and somehow made _him_ feel as if he'd done something wrong. There was something special about that woman. Even her scent… It might have been perfume or body wash or even just her sweat, but it made him _need_ , and he'd never experienced that before. Not with a dozen girls before her, and not with any since.

 _She might have felt something—_

 _No._ Kogami shook his head and, for reassurance, let his hand run over the barrel of the shotgun lying beside him. _She would never sink so low. Tsunemori's good. Pure. Hell, her Psycho-Pass never even wavers. She wouldn't want anything to do with me._

He closed his eyes. Tsunemori deserved better than him, someone who could look her in the eye. Because he couldn't—not any more.

The Red Crane had run into the _Neosalanx_ seeking protection and found it—for all the good it did him. Kogami followed, the thrill of the hunt on him, and proceeded to dismantle a dozen of Pau's heavies. After that display, they'd surrendered the hacker to him with little protest.

 _He deserved it. People could have died. No, I'm sure they_ did _die. He was a murderer._

Kogami had dragged the hacker—a gangly college student, practically a kid, with terror in his eyes and useless computer disks falling out of his pockets—outside of the _Neosalanx_ , onto the quay. There had been a Hong Kong freighter outside, Kogami remembered, its bow rising like a rusty paint-flecked wall above the harbor. Under the shadow of that huge ship, as Pau's regulars watched with interest, some making lewd jokes, Kogami had shot the hacker in the back of the head. The body fell like they all did, as if the strings had been cut. Kogami went back inside and ordered a drink, and they'd given it to him free of charge.

After that, the trail went cold. So Kogami returned to the bar and got another drink, telling himself that he would book passage on the freighter to Hong Kong. But when it left, he was still there. _I'll take the next one,_ he'd thought. And when a few of the regulars decided to dispose of him, Kogami was almost happy—it was a way to cleanse himself of bitterness and frustration. That was when he'd gotten his scar, along with an invitation from Lor Sam Pau himself to become a member of his crew.

He accepted.

Why? He still couldn't say for sure. All of his buddies were dead, pretty much. Sasayama. Kagari. And now old man Masaoka, the toughest cop Kogami had ever known. It was enough to make him want to weep. Except he didn't think he knew how to cry any more, even if Tsunemori wanted him to.

"Drink," Kogami said roughly, and the serving girl shot him one terrified glance before darting away. That was one good thing about his reputation—good service.

What the girl brought back, atop a tray that trembled above her shaking limbs, was a recreation of a drink Masaoka had introduced him to. According to the old man, it was called the Three Wise Men, and gave whoever drank it long life.

 _Bullshit._ Kogami took the glass and nodded. The girl fled. _More like gives you ulcers. Probably makes life seem long._

As he drank, slowly, so as not to fall with undue haste into the clutches of the Mean Drunk, he threw his eye over the bar. The _Neosalanx_ was an establishment of the red light district. This meant that it hosted a certain kind of clientele. Kogami made no judgments. He was here to _feel_ something. In that, Pau was keeping up his end of the bargain nicely.

It was late in the day—or was it early? Kogami considered the possibility that it was nighttime, then the converse. He decided that it made no difference to him either way.

It was late/early in the _Neosalanx_ and the courtesans sat like pretty flowers in advantageous places—along the edges of the bar, near the grand entrance (which featured two potted ferns and four concrete steps leading into the club's main lounge area), and by the gaming tables. The ones by the bar, in Kogami's estimation, were the least attractive. That stood to reason, since the bar was primarily occupied by young men wearing VR helmets. Those who frequented the gaming tables were the most voluptuous, though none, in his opinion, stood a candle to Tsunemori at her worst.

 _Stop thinking about her,_ Kogami thought roughly. He drank and felt some of his anger dissipate, drawn out of his blood by the displacement of chemical intoxication. He studied Lor Sam Pau's crew, saw the way they averted their eyes when he looked in their direction, and smiled. He traded flirtatious glances with the working girls, who seemed to find his dangerous reputation alluring.

Time passed. Kogami sat in his booth all alone and drank several of Masaoka's foul concoctions—by now he thought they were rather delicious, actually—and periodically got up to piss. The air smelled of warm electronics, liquor, and human sweat. He found it better than any cologne. It must have been past midnight, because the only people still in the _Neosalanx_ wore VR helmets and interacted with sights and sounds that didn't exist in reality, only their bulbous heads visible in the neon glow from the signage behind the bar. In an earlier age, Kogami thought, there would have been tobacco smoke wreathing the heads of the bar-goers, not flavored water vapor. Such was the downside of living in the twenty-second century.

He got up to piss again. His bladder was filling itself every few seconds, it seemed. Kogami moved around the booth, intending to stand, and managed to fall against the next table over, sending dirty glassware flying onto the grimy carpet. _Shit._ He clawed himself upright and tried to stay in one place, which sounded simple but was quite difficult. Japan was moving beneath his feet.

 _Earthquake,_ he thought.

The bathroom was less than fifteen feet away, just around the corner, but Kogami could as easily have walked to Hong Kong. He clutched the wall and used it as a guide and a friend on his journey. When he reached the hallway, though, he found his path blocked. He pawed at his eyes and squinted, trying to see through the hazy darkness.

Three grinning faces stared back at him. Kogami remembered them. Two had been friends of Kogami's tailor, and present during that aborted robbery. The other was a man Kogami had shared a drink with. He rummaged through his memory in the manner of a man searching a drawer full of junk for a particular key.

That was right—the other man was the _Neosalanx's_ bouncer. One of Pau's men.

Pain erupted from his left eye, sending Kogami reeling. He collapsed into more tables, sending cutlery and packets of soy sauce and ketchup flying. _Fuck._ He blinked up and saw the three men grinning wider. One of them, Pau's bouncer, was massaging his fist.

The smallest man, a rat-like fellow with a goatee and a purple shirt, displayed gold teeth in a wide grin. "Hey, friend, guess what?"

Kogami grunted. "What?"

"We're going to fuck you _up_. Then we're going to throw your body in the harbor. Then Akita will go back to being the nice place it was before _you_ showed up."

Kogami's lips twitched. He half-knelt, half-crouched on the filthy floor of the nightclub, his eye swollen and bloody, alcohol making his ears ring and the world sway around him. But deep inside his chest, something was happening.

"He's too drunk. Look at him. Doesn't understand what's happening."

 _I was a cop._ Kogami slowly climbed to his feet, using his legs to brace himself against the overturned table. The sensation in his chest grew more powerful, more resonant, and seemed to spill over into his arms and legs, and rise into his head. It cleared most of the cotton from his head and seemed to calm the heaving of the walls and floor. _I was an Inspector with the Public Safety Bureau. I protected people._

"Are you ready to die, asshole?"

The smile that broke over Kogami's face was the mirror image of Makishima's, but he had no way of knowing that.

"Yes," Kogami said simply.

The bouncer shifted his weight, preparing to throw a punch, but Kogami saw it coming and dived headfirst into all three men. There was a frenzied shout of anger and fear as they all went down, and then Kogami rolled, anger making his movements ruthless and precise, and brought his elbow down on the bouncer's throat. Something broke; there was a snapping sound and then a choking gasp, and the bouncer's eyes widened in sudden fear. Kogami grinned at him and turned his attention to the other two men, who were just now gaining their feet.

Kogami rose and brought his left leg up in a kick that shattered the small man's ribcage. He followed it up with a kick to the knee, which bent the joint the wrong way, eliciting a sharp cry of pain and a string of curses. The goatee went down, arms flailing, pulling tablecloths after him.

Somewhere in the haze of the nightclub, Kogami was aware of an alarm blaring in the background. The place seemed deserted.

The third man slashed at his belly with a switchknife. Kogami flowed with the strike, letting it miss his flesh by centimeters, and followed it back to the man. He seized the man's wrist and forced the knife inward, so that its point faced its owner, and pushed. The man fought back, panic filling his eyes, but Kogami's muscles had been honed through a daily regimen of martial arts. The knife slid into the man's chest with the slightest resistance, and blood began to pour from his mouth.

"You fucker," the man gurgled, and as Kogami stared into his eyes he saw that they were flecked with tiny particles of silver. Cyborg implants. They reminded him of Choe Gu-sung, and he felt a surge of anger that he'd lost the trail.

When his last attacker fell, to bleed all over the floor, Kogami looked around. They'd made quite a mess. Pieces of broken glass glittered like gemstones on the thick carpet. Blood from multiple wounds—some of which were Kogami's—made dark stains on clothing, carpet, and tables. The karaoke machine was no longer singing a backing vocal to the Beatles' _Eight Days a Week_.

Kogami began to limp toward the exit. He didn't know where he was going; he had no money, and Pau had fed him his only meals. But he was fairly sure that this was only a prelude to a larger movement, so to speak. If Pau wanted him dead, he stood very little chance of surviving in the crime lord's own establishment.

As he passed the bar, Kogami snagged an opened bottle of whiskey and cradled it under his good arm. His head had cleared far too much for his own good—reality was beginning to impinge upon things. _He hit me first. I didn't start it._

As he descended the concrete steps and was about to step out into the filth of the quay, Kogami came to a stop. Three more shadows appeared in the open doorway—two men holding sawed-off shotguns, and one wearing a silk vest.

Lor Sam Pau, he thought.

"Kogami," said Pau in a genial way, as if the two of them had bumped into each other on the street. "Not leaving already, are you?"

Kogami studied the hired muscle and calculated his chances. Just then, his bad leg began to buckle underneath him. He remained standing, but only just.

"I'd planned to, yeah."

"You don't enjoy my club?"

"I've enjoyed it all night," Kogami said. "I think it's time for me to leave."

Pau spread his hands and smiled. "Well, _there's_ something we can all agree on."

Kogami made a move as if to approach the crime lord. Instantly two shotguns were pointed in his direction. He shrugged.

 _Don't think there's a way out of this one. Too bad._ His one regret was that he wouldn't have a chance to apologize to Tsunemori. He'd broken his promise.

"Why don't we go to my office?" Pau suggested, nodding to the rear of the nightclub. "We can discuss things easier there."

Kogami shrugged again and took a swig from his bottle of whiskey.

 _Let's get this over with._

* * *

"Hiroki informed me that you wished to speak with me," said Kurou Yamato. The Vice Chairman of Sibyl was still at his desk, the Stadium around them rapidly emptying of legislators—almost, Shogo thought, like soap residue swirling down a drain. Like most of their sessions, it had been uneventful. The centerpiece resolution involved an increase in the Judgment rate for the Nara Prefecture. "Is there anything I can help you with?"

"Yes." Makishima had voted in favor of the measure. _It's not like it truly matters—this place will be destroyed before too long._ He would miss some aspects of the Sibyl System, the purely aesthetic ones. It was invigorating to live in a world that was, in essence, the creation of hundreds of minds. You could almost hear thoughts humming along in the background, like hot water whooshing through a radiator.

Yamato smiled. It was a trifle stiff, perhaps, but genuine enough. "Well, what is it, Shogo?"

"I'd like to meet Mr Chambers."

The grin that engulfed Yamato's broad face was dazzling, like drawing open the curtains at approximately noon. You could see why the man succeeded—no, _thrived_ —in public office. "Well, it's about time! No, really, Shogo, I'm thrilled to hear it. He's been anxious to meet you for so long… And to be frank, I'd almost begun to think you were putting it off for some reason."

Makishima's knuckles rapped the hard oak top of the Vice Chairman's desk. He cocked his head, listening. The sound it gave off echoed through the deserted chambers, a plucked string in an empty concert hall. "To be equally frank, Kurou, I _was_. You know what I was like on the outside. Trusting people isn't in my nature. But I've been listening and learning about Mr Chambers, and everybody seems to agree that he is an extraordinary _person_."

Yamato had been smiling and nodding along with his words of praise, but Makishima's emphasis on _person_ caused the smile to freeze up. The Vice Chairman turned away and began to sort and stack papers on his desk. "And who have you spoken with, I wonder, about Chambers?"

"People."

"Ah, yes." The smile that appeared on Yamato's face _now_ would not win him many votes on the campaign trail. "We have a few of those here in the System, don't we."

"Just a few."

Makishima studied Yamato's face, trying to read what was behind the mask, but he could discern little. The Vice Chairman was a practiced liar, he knew, and by force of habit held his cards close to his chest.

Yamato finished stacking his papers, and now began to load them into his briefcase, guiding each neat-edged pile into its own accordion pocket. When the briefcase bulged with documents, he snapped the two bright brass catches into place and wrapped both arms around the case, his left hand grasping the other wrist.

"How are the Okaba Street trials coming along?" Makishima spoke as if the question were an afterthought.

Yamato, in the middle of descending the central dais, paused in mid-step. He looked up at Makishima expressionlessly. "You _are_ well-informed, aren't you, Mr Makishima?"

"When are you leaving?" Makishima pursued. "It must be soon, because from what I've been able to learn the office building at Okaba Street has been closed for weeks. The project has run its course. I'm assuming the technical problem was solved?"

"It will be solved in due course," said Yamato. "Of that I can assure you."

"When?"

The Vice Chairman ignored the question. "When do you plan to meet Chambers?"

 _He doesn't know how much I know, which serves my interests just fine._ Yamato also didn't know how much Makishma _didn't_ know—which was probably more beneficial to him. He didn't want to be hauled before Chambers just yet.

"Soon."

Yamato smiled, then continued to descend the steps. The Stadium was by now completely deserted; Makishima and the Vice Chairman were the only two Sibyl members still in it, and the latter began the long walk up one of the cardinal ramps to the elevator. Makishima kept a safe distance behind, a few steps aft of the man's shoulder, in case he should lash out with a physical attack. Not likely to happen, but it _was_ possible.

"When are you leaving?" Makishima asked again.

Yamato grunted. "When Chambers decides it is time."

"So all of that guff about beings gods, being free from the prison of the flesh—that was all meaningless?"

Yamato shot him a glance from the corner of his eye. "Not meaningless— _my_ opinion. But Chambers calls the shots around here, not me."

"You built this place," Makishima pointed out. "You built everything. Nona Tower, the Ministry, the works."

"Why?"

Makishima blinked. "What?"

"Why do you think I built it all, Shogo?" The Vice Chairman turned and gesticulated with his briefcase, a motion that encompassed the entire Stadium, and, by extension, the Sibyl System itself. "For pride? For money?"

"For power," Makishima said, but he suspected that it wasn't as cut-and-dried as that. He, of all people, knew the attractions (and limits!) of mere power. There were other, more subtle pleasures at work.

Yamato shook his head. "No. I had power, Shogo. Japanese lawmakers were practically falling over themselves for a chance to have a private meeting when I was chairman of my company. I had money, power, women—beautiful women, Shogo, _supermodels_. I had houses and even a private island. So I ask you again, _why did I create this place?_ "

It was a good question, and not one that Makishima felt he could answer just yet. The question of motive was foremost in any crime, but this crime was of a different order than any that had been perpetrated before. A mugger steals a purse and thereby takes perhaps tens of thousands of yen from an innocent citizen; a murderer takes a life, and all of its unlived experiences; corporate malfeasance leads to the poisoning of waterways, food supplies, even the air that people breathe. All crimes, great and small, come with victims. But Yamato's crime was on a scale scarcely to be imagined. If, as some Japanese commentators speculated, the other nations of the Earth destroyed themselves utterly in war, then Japan would remain as the only human civilization on the face of the planet. And if that happened, Yamato would have been responsible for a crime _against every human being in existence_. Even by Makishima's standards, it was heady stuff. What could possibly motivate such an act?

"I don't know."

"You view me as a monster," Yamato said. "Very well—that's your right. But think back to your history, Shogo; I know you're well read. What element has caused some of the greatest strife in the ages?"

That was an easy one. "Religion," he said.

Yamato nodded toward the elevator, and they began to walk toward it. "Correct. But just saying the word doesn't answer the question. What _about_ religion causes men and women to forsake everything else?"

"A desire for eternal life," Makishima guessed.

"Wrong. Belief in something greater than themselves."

"I thought you and I were supposed to be the higher powers now. Isn't that what you said? That in the Sibyl System, mankind has risen to the level of gods?"

"We have, Shogo, but there are powers even greater than us. A being that even the _gods_ worship. A being that existed for all the ages of time, that roamed the stars in endless search of communion with sentient entities. And when such a being found them, it raised them up into gods, to live for an eternity in splendor and joy. In _worship_ of its own act of existence."

The skin on the back of Makishima's neck began to prickle. The last time that happened, he'd been face to face with Shinya Kogami in the midst of the hyper-oat fields, his life draining away drop by precious drop. "Chambers," he said with dawning understanding. "You're talking about _Chambers_."

The elevator chimed, the doors swept open silently. Yamato climbed aboard with Makishima at his heels. The doors enclosed them in darkened silence, and the Vice Chairman stabbed the button for the Astrocyte's main concourse. The elevator car began to rise, accompanied by the downward pull of one's guts. Makishima closed his eyes and _thought_.

"Chambers," Yamato agreed.

"That was what she meant," Makishima said softly, "when she said he wasn't human."

The Vice Chairman raised an eyebrow. "Evelyn said that?" He clucked his tongue. "Disloyalty. Wouldn't have believed it of her. She must have grown more attached to you than I'd supposed. But what happened to her in Caneworth was quite traumatizing. Allowances can be made."

"When did you meet it?" Makishima didn't specify what he meant. It was clear to both of them.

" _Him_ , Shogo. Chambers identifies as male."

"Him, then."

"Nearly fifty years ago. I was a lawmaker in the Japanese Diet and I'd just been assigned to the Subcommittee on Defense Affairs. Back then it was very dry stuff—facts and figures about our military coordination with the Americans, drills against opposing navies, budgetary matters. Very dry. To be perfectly honest, I slept through most of the hearings. Listening to shriveled old admirals and generals tell us about missiles and bombs and deployments was my idea of torture. Of course, I was a young man then."

"Why did you bother showing up?"

Yamato shrugged. "It was an honor for such a young politician. My rise had been, as they say in the news media, _meteoric_. I did what I was supposed to do in order to gather influence. But you wanted to hear about Chambers. Well, one day our subcommittee meeting turned out to be top-secret. I was intrigued. I decided to pay attention to everything that was said. And it was astonishing."

Makishima didn't say anything. This was a gold mine, he thought—let Yamato tell him everything, reveal every secret. Finally the design of things was being laid bare.

"In the months after the great earthquake of '46, there had been seismological surveys conducted by the Interior Ministry in order to determine the risk of more tectonic shifts. The potential for a future disaster was great, so a lot of money was put into the program. Robotic submersibles were sent to examine the coastal floor of Japan, to analyze fault lines, conduct core sample drilling, and so on.

"Well, they found more than just minerals down there. The earthquake had dislodged a piece of the Earth's crust and revealed an object within." The Vice Chairman looked closely at Makishima. "Have you ever heard of a lithopedion?"

Makishima shook his head.

"It's a medical term referring to a fetus that dies during pregnancy and is stored by the mother's body within layers of calcified tissue. The mass can exist for years, even decades, without detection. That's what they found beneath Japan—a piece of the Earth's crust that contained a foreign object. At first they didn't know what it was, only that it was metallic and of great purity. But it was interesting enough that they convened a hearing for us lawmakers. And that was when I first learned of Chambers."

"He was inside?"

"Correct." Yamato closed his eyes as the elevator ascended; with his head slightly upturned he looked quite beatific, peaceful, almost saintlike. "I was the only lawmaker on the subcommittee to have any experience with science, so they deferred to me. My sister, you see, was a rather distinguished researcher in those days. I managed to get her assigned to the team that would study the object. She was quite grateful to me."

 _His sister._ Choe had told him about the Yamato family records and their inexplicable purging from the Ministry database—now they knew why.

"It was soon realized that the object in question was not native to the Earth. It fell onto our planet at a far earlier stage of human evolution—perhaps before we as a species even existed. It was covered by rock and, inert, it lasted for centuries in a kind of slumber."

"An alien ship," Makishima said slowly.

"Hardly," Yamato scoffed. "That would be the tabloid headline, of course, but such language demeans the very nature of Chambers. He is not an _alien_. He is of the earliest moments of Time, when galaxies were still coalescing, the shape of things yet to come. He came to us quite on purpose, he said, because he saw that we would grow to become worthy of his attention." Yamato smiled in a self-satisfied way. "And look around you, Shogo—haven't we just?"

Trying to steer the conversation back to facts, for he saw the glint of madness in Yamato's eyes, Makishima said, "You mentioned that you got your sister placed on the research team. How did you manage that?"

"Oh, Mayumi? She'd always been brilliant. Our parents recognized her intelligence from an early age. She was the type to get scholarships while half-asleep, you know, while _I_ …" Yamato trailed off, shrugging. "I was more mercenary-minded. I started my first company at twelve. Made a mint, too.

"When I suggested that my sister head the government team researching the Trench Artifact—that was its official designation—my fellow lawmakers were only too glad to acquiesce. Having the brother of the chief researcher as a colleague would keep them all in the loop, you see, and everyone realized that there were fortunes to be made from the discovery. So it worked out for everybody."

"What did they find?"

"The object itself was hollow. It had been fashioned as a form of ark, which could transport life across vast interstellar distances. As I said before, Chambers travels in search of beings worthy of transcendence. He had found a few before he came to Earth. They were inside of him. Asleep."

"Aliens?" Makishima asked incredulously.

"Yes. They live inside Chambers—not solely in a physical sense, you understand, but spiritually as well. The technology that powers the Sibyl System was given to us by Chambers. It was how he communed with his worshippers. The mind enters him and experiences his glory—takes part in his act of creation, much as the citizens of Japan take part in _our_ little performance. Mayumi found the subject a fascinating area of research. She said the technology was centuries more advanced than ours."

It sounded insane, but Makishima couldn't begin to argue against what Yamato was saying. There was no other explanation that fit all the facts. Nevertheless, it was astonishing. He didn't consider himself prone to flights of fancy, but this filled him with a sense of wonder that he'd never before experienced. It was no surprise that a man like Kurou Yamato could be so taken in by it. When set against the immensity of the Chambers discovery, his former ambition must have paled in comparison.

"Unfortunately, those he had found worthy _before_ lost Chambers' favor."

Makishima narrowed his eyes. "What does that mean?"

"The beings that were found inside of Chambers could not be roused. As they had slept for centuries in his belly, they became frail and sickly. Only through his grace did they continue to live."

 _Something doesn't add up._ "And where are they now?"

"Still inside him," Yamato said. "It hardly matters. Chambers has found his new flock— _us_. Once the technology is finished, we will displace them and Chambers will depart, with us, to the farthest reaches of the universe. There we will experience eternity."

The elevator came to a stop at the three-hundredth floor. Yamato's penthouse. As the doors slid open and Yamato got off, Makishima asked a final question.

"When will that happen?"

The Vice Chairman didn't turn around, but Makishima could see a smile beginning to form on the edge of his face. It was a smile he hadn't yet seen before, unlike the boastful, proud, satisfied, and happy smiles Yamato usually wore. This one was secretive.

"Soon," Yamato replied, and began the short walk to the door of his penthouse. "Very soon, Shogo. But before that happens, why don't you go see Chambers in person? You could get all the answers to your questions from him." Deep, resonant laughter. "I'm sure you would both learn something from that experience."

 _Yes,_ Makishima thought, and stabbed the button for his own floor. _Why don't I?_


	9. Rescue

That night, Makishima dreamed.

He was lying on the beach, alone, in a bed sculpted out of sand. The mattress, the sheets, the pillows—all were impeccably rendered, with the skill of an artisan. As he sat up and looked around, the sand poured around his elbows and knees. The tide was out, stranding several hermit crabs in awkward repose, their antennae plying the air helplessly. The sky was a calm pastel blue, serene, undisturbed by wind or cloud. When Makishima looked around himself, searching for other beach-goers, or perhaps a resort in the background, he saw very little, because his head seemed to turn back to the sea of its own accord. In all, though, it was an idyllic scene, and he wanted nothing more than to go back to sleep upon his bed of sand.

The air, however, carried a faint smell of damp, rotting flesh. _Something has died._ He sat up further, suddenly wary.

When he climbed to his feet, he inadvertently knocked over the sand headboard of his bed, and, looking down at it, he felt an uncharacteristically keen sense of loss, even grief.

 _This is not like me,_ he thought. _Something is wrong. I don't belong here._

The beach extended hundreds of yards in either direction, so Makishima chose one at random—the left, because he was left-handed—and began to walk. His bare toes delved into the sand like burrowing worms, and he let them curl into it; the sensation was pleasurable, and one that he remembered from childhood. _But you grew up in Tokyo,_ a voice seemed to whisper in his head, but Makishima shied away from it. As he walked he looked down at himself, curious as to his present state, and saw that he was smartly dressed in the uniform of a Public Safety Bureau Inspector, sans shoes. His badge gleamed silver and gold upon his chest; he reached down to polish it with his knuckles, for it was important, he thought, and signified his devotion to duty.

 _No,_ the voice seemed to say, softly. It was so quiet that the rustling of sand nearly drowned it out. _That's wrong—that isn't you. This is a lie. Look around you! WAKE UP._

Turning his head, as if to look away from a distasteful scene, Makishima kept walking. The beach led upwards into a slight incline. As he walked, the fetid stench of decaying meat grew stronger, the odor more penetrating. He wrinkled his nose. Then he stopped, startled. On the sand in front of him, perhaps twenty yards away, he saw the source of the malodor: a writhing, half-rotten sea squid tentacle, its suckers outstretched as it flowed and undulated across the beach sand, searching for _something_ …

A sense of pure horror began to overcome Makishima. It was the prickly, back-of-the-neck terror when a large spider scuttles across the bathroom ceiling at night. He began to edge away from the groping tentacle.

His movement seemed to draw its attention, however, and with terrifying speed the tentacle slid from the beach and departed into the ocean, leaving only a furrow in the beach sand. Makishima stared after it, dumbfounded and slightly afraid—for the tide was just now coming in, and how _long_ could a tentacle be, he thought—before turning abruptly to head back up the beach. He would explore the other direction, he thought.

Then he saw it.

Glimpsed out of the corner of his eye, at first it was just a swell rising on the water. It could have been mistaken for the incoming tide, but some shaky part of Makishima knew better. The ripple was too large to be a simple wave—there had to be something _under_ that crest, he knew, and the thought redoubled his horror, amplified it until he felt sweat bead up on the back of his shirt.

His stroll became a loping walk. He hadn't run on the beach in years, but he thought he would give it a try now—he began to sprint, his feet kicking up clumps of wet sand, sinking down to his heels with each stride. His breath grew labored and came in sharp bursts, and he quickly passed the half-ruined bed of sand that he'd wakened from, and upset it further by kicking the thing to pieces as he flew by.

When he'd run nearly two hundred yards up the beach, the acid in his legs overtook him. Makishima slowed to a jog, and chanced a quick glance at the sea, hoping that it would be as flat and boring as any seaside. But it wasn't, and as the blood drained from his face, he forgot to keep running. He slowed to a stop and could do nothing more than stare in disbelief.

Out there, where the tide was making its final decision to at last return to shore, floated a _thing_. Before, it had been concealed by the waves, but now its true form rose hideously from the water. It was, he thought, an amalgamation of every night-terror of every child in Japan. If it stood—and he sorely hoped that it _couldn't_ —it would tower as high as a building, with a ridged brow where a gaping mouth seemed to shriek in utter silence. It was impossible to say _what_ it was, and perhaps that made it more terrible. Clearly of the sea, it was infested with dozens of insect eyes, yet they were as dead and black as a shark's; and its tentacles brought to mind an octopus, but the suckers had each their own mouth, with tiny serrated teeth that begged to find a fleshy limb to tear to shreds. Unconsciously, Makishima began to cross his arms protectively around himself. He found himself staring helplessly as the creature approached—and it _was_ approaching, sweep by sweep of those long scaly fins—but he simply could not move.

 _Leave now,_ the voice in his head begged, and Makishima wanted nothing more than to heed its cry, but the most he could do was take a few slow, stumbling steps up the shoreline, until he stood on a rocky outcropping just beyond the sand. _You do not belong here. He has you in his grip. You must fight._

"How?" Makishima croaked, and his voice came out in a dry half-whisper. "I don't know what's happening, damn you! Where am I? Who _are_ you?"

 _Your thoughts drew his attention, and he has taken your memory. You must fight, Shogo!_

He tore his eyes away from the terrible spectre that was fast-approaching, its tentacles beginning to climb restlessly ashore, inch by slimy inch. "Shogo?" he echoed.

 _Your name. You are Shogo Makishima. You are in the Sibyl System._

The beach seemed to waver slightly, as if a piece of celluloid had been twisted in a film camera. The whole scene jumped, and Makishima blinked. For a brief moment, he seemed to _remember_.

"Shogo Makishima," he said softly. The name fit.

 _We are losing the signal, Shogo. Chambers has you. The System is peer-to-peer, but all nodes go through him, and he is blocking you off from the rest of us. If he succeeds, you won't be able to return. You have to FIGHT._

"How?" he demanded. "And who _are_ you, damn it?"

 _Masuda. Evelyn is with me. Do you remember our names?_

"Evelyn." He tested the word and found that it conjured up exactly one idea: terrible beauty. "I think so."

 _Chambers will try to devour you._ The voice became softer, quieter, as if its owner were whispering in his ear. _Don't let him._

"I can't hear you," Makishima muttered. "What did you say?"

 _Fight… fight…_ The voice faded to a murmur, then vanished entirely, leaving only the sound of the surf and the sound of a large body maneuvering itself from sea to shore.

He looked up, slowly.

The creature was halfway onto the beach, but it was no less frightening for that. Its glistening yellow eyes were all fixated upon him. Its gaping mouth, from which seaweed clung to daggerlike teeth, almost like garnish, seemed to be howling his name, but he couldn't hear a thing. Part of Makishima wanted to flee, still, but now that he knew his own name something seemed to have changed.

"Shogo Makishima is my name," he said, as if to himself.

Glimmers of memory stirred. He began to realize that while his mind was quailing in fear, his body—covered as it was with layers of lean, strong muscle—was tensed up, ready to spring him into battle. For a few seconds he wavered on the brink between those two extremes, undecided, but the creature took the decision out of his hands.

 _"SHOOGGGOOOO,"_ it howled, at once mournful and yearning, the ecstatic cry of a lover and the scream of a mortal enemy. _"SHHOOOGGGGOOOOO…"_

Without making a conscious decision, Makishima was moving. On the ground beside him, half-buried in the sand, was the wreck of a small fishing boat. He bent down and cracked off a length of old wood, about as tall as he was, and, using a nearby rock, he smashed the tip until only a jagged remnant remained. _Good enough,_ he thought with a detached sort of judgment, as if he fashioned makeshift weapons as a hobby and found this particular specimen only moderately acceptable.

Chambers—for he knew that name, now, and knew that it belonged to the creature—had come fully ashore. It rose to its full height and veritably towered over Makishima, but he gripped the spear firmly and did not cower. Instead, when the creature rose to give a triumphant roar, he darted toward it with the quickness of a water rat.

His fear had gone silent, leaving only the certainty of his actions. He knew that what he was doing was necessary, so he did it without hesitation, as any frontiersman might amputate a limb after a snakebite. His feet flying over sand, his body held low, an aerodynamic surge, he ran toward the center of Chambers' body and threw the spear with all of his might toward its gaping mouth.

His aim was true. The silent roar became a deafening one as the spear knocked dripping teeth aside and lodged itself into the brainstem of the creature. Makishima fell roughly onto his shoulder after throwing the javelin and rolled to his feet. He ran some distance down the shore, until he felt that it was safe to turn and examine his handiwork.

Blood the color of old coffee grounds dripped with the consistency of honey from Chambers' mouth. The roar had quickly changed into a wet coughing gasp, and as Makishima watched the creature fell onto the beach with a sound to rival a house falling.

There, as Makishima watched without pity, it died, slowly and with great painful cries.

He felt no satisfaction, for it was a job that had to be done. Nor did he feel any fear, for his memories had begun to return.

 _You'll have to try harder than that, Chambers._

* * *

"I didn't know that Chambers would go after you," said Masuda, his tone apologetic but also a touch remonstrative. "But whatever gave you the idea to talk to _Kurou_ about it? He's a fanatic. He would leap from a bridge if Chambers ordered him to."

"I can't tell you," Makishima said, thinking of the attack that Choe and the Tsunemori girl were planning. If it succeeded, the Sibyl System wouldn't be long for the world, and he couldn't afford to give Chambers any warning, even if he _did_ trust his friends. Well, mostly.

"He said that before," Evelyn told Masuda. "He thinks we're stupid." She looked hard at Makishima. "You're planning something with Shusei."

Makishima's eyes must have widened perceptibly, for Sawaki smiled and nodded at him. "That's right. You spoke his name several times in your sleep. He's still alive, isn't he? Where is he? I would _love_ to see him again, face to face. Shusei and I have unfinished business together."

Rising from the sofa, Makishima wandered over to the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. As he peered at its contents, his face cast in its bluish glow, he pursed his lips. "I don't know what you're talking about. _However._ " He gave Sawaki, who had been about to angrily interrupt, a forceful look. "If we were to speak hypothetically, I would tell both of you that if you have a bucket list, you should spend more time fulfilling it. Go climb Everest, if that's your thing—the Sibyl System can conjure it up easily enough, and you don't have that much time left. None of us do." He was under no illusion that he would escape the fate of the Sibyl System. On the contrary—he would go down smiling.

Spying an orange in the fruit bowl, he snagged it and began to peel it apart with his fingernails. The tough skin felt, to his memory, exactly like a real orange, but of course it was impossible to know for certain. Maybe Chambers had reprogrammed him to make him _think_ oranges were round—perhaps in the real world, oranges and bananas were reversed. Makishima sighed. _Just stop it, already._

Masuda went over to the window of his penthouse, the floor-to-ceiling one that overlooked virtual Tokyo, and stared off into the distance. Sawaki, meanwhile, went to one of the stools on the opposite side of the kitchen island and sat. She gazed at him expectantly, spinning her bar stool left to right, left to right, with only her eyes fastened on him.

"Well?" he said curiously. He wasn't sure what he meant by it.

"You tried this before," Evelyn reminded him, and stopped spinning. "Your grand attempt to reach Chambers and reveal his truth to all of Japan. It failed."

"So it did," he acknowledged.

"Then why do you expect us to think this attempt will do any better?"

Makishima thought for a moment. "I've learned from my mistakes?"

That elicited a warm, throaty laugh, and for a moment Makishima could only stare at her beauty, orange slice half-raised to his lips. Even though a murderer many times over, there was kindness in her eyes. Then he shook his head and popped the slice into his mouth.

"What's so funny?" he asked.

"That you think Chambers hasn't. What exactly do you think he _is,_ Shogo? A computer? He is more than that. He'll always be one step ahead of you."

"As Mr Yamato explained it, he is God," Makishima said, and then frowned. "Or _a_ god. He wasn't exactly clear on that."

From the window, and without turning around, Masuda spoke. "He's a caretaker."

With a glance at Sawaki, who rolled her eyes as if to say _Here he goes again,_ Makishima took his orange and went over to stand beside the Sibyl programmer. He offered a slice, which Masuda accepted. The juice coated both of their fingers.

"What did you mean just now?" Makishima asked. "A caretaker in what way?"

Between slurps of orange, Hiroki said, "It's just something I've noticed over the years. It's probably nothing."

"Please," Makishima said.

"All right." Masuda turned back to the window and made an encompassing gesture. "Tokyo. Well, a representation of it, yes. But the city exists. Home to millions of people, the hub of billions of yen of business transactions every day, it _should_ be chaos. Right? How does a metropolis like Tokyo not fall apart? Here's one example. Think of the recycling collection. There are no human employees—there haven't been for over fifty years. Yet people put out their trash bins and their recycling bins and somehow, when nobody is looking, they vanish. How?"

"Automated garbage trucks," Makishima said. "They pick up the bins in the middle of the night."

"Yes. The software that runs those city-wide sanitation services, from garbage trucks, to tree trimming, to repairing sewer mains, is written by human beings for a specific purpose. And as such, those kinds of programs—we called them 'caretaker programs' in my industry—tend to share certain commonalities. In other words, since their goal, maintaining a system, is the same, the programs themselves seem very alike, though their individual purposes may be different."

Makishima tried to restrain his impatience. If he could listen to Toyohisa Senguji go on his endless rants about hunting, he could listen to Masuda. "What does that have to do with Chambers?"

"Well, if I had to guess, I would say that _he_ is a caretaker program." Masuda shook his head. "It jumped out at me shortly after I arrived in the Sibyl System and saw how things operate here. Or, more accurately, how things _don't_ operate. If Chambers were just the ruler of Sibyl, you would expect him to act like a king or a tyrant, but he doesn't. He ensures that the rules are followed and just… fades into the background, like he doesn't care if we hate, fear, or even respect him. And I think he doesn't care because he wasn't programmed to. The only thing he concerns himself with is the smooth running of the System." Masuda hesitated, as if he wanted to add more, but then shook his head and turned away.

 _He knows something._ It was one of those moments of instinct for Makishima, when he sensed that his quarry was hiding something from him. Did they not realize that he could see through them as if they were made of cut glass?

"He goes on like this all the time," Evelyn said, rolling her eyes. Makishima glanced back at her. "It's one of the reasons Kurou banished him to Naoka's lab, where they could both talk conspiracy theories to their hearts' content."

"You think he's involved in something else," Makishima prompted, and the programmer turned to look at him, a startled expression on his face. _You can't hide anything from me,_ Makishima thought.

"Well, just the Okaba Street project. We tried it a few times, and it worked, but it would always lead to rejection. The transplanted consciousness would be attacked by the immune system, treated as foreign tissue." Masuda sounded uneasy. "Which _should_ have been impossible, because it was just a neurocortical pattern being transferred, not actual brain matter…"

"You said before that the project was shut down because it was a failure," Makishima said.

Masuda nodded. "We couldn't get it to work. This happened, oh, years ago. Before you ever came into the System, Shogo. Naoka used to head up our end of the research, communicating with the outside staff at Senguji Industries. I just helped out."

Makishima handed him another orange slice in silence.

"The funny thing is, I saw Naoka a while back and he was preparing the link-up again," Masuda said reluctantly. "But as far as I know, the company was shut down, so what was he connecting to?" He shrugged. "Maybe it was nothing."

A premonition ran up Makishima's spine. He stared out at Tokyo and saw his own reflection in the glass: handsome, sharp-edged, cold-eyed. "When did you see Naoka?"

"Oh, about a month or two ago." Masuda blinked. "Come to think of it, it was same day that you entered the Sibyl System, Shogo. Funny."

 _Yes, very funny._ Makishima went to the sofa and lowered himself down like a very old man. His bones suddenly felt brittle, as if they had tiny holes bored into them, and a chill overtook him. He crossed his arms and shivered, remembering the creature—Chambers—on the beach, intent upon devouring him.

He closed his eyes. _I won't let you win._

* * *

"We're ready, ma'am," the pilot shouted, his voice barely audible over the roar of the rotors, and Akane nodded.

"Go," she cried, and the two C-22 Ospreys rose in unison from the top of Nona Tower, birds leaving their mother's nest, and began to soar over Tokyo.

In the cabin, Akane lingered for a few moments in the cockpit doorway, watching the pilots as they charted their course to Akita. Just behind her, she was acutely aware of Itaru Arishima watching her silently, as he always seemed to be doing. _They're Sibyl's men,_ she thought, before turning to face the assembled Enforcers. Her strike teams looked bored—well, apart from Nami Chisaka; _she_ looked as if she were going to throw up from excitement—but Akane knew that it was all a mask. This kind of operation was unusual enough that she knew everyone on board was dying to know why Shinya Kogami was so damn important to the Sibyl System.

 _They won't hear it from me._

"Our ETA to Akita is one hour and fifteen minutes." She spoke in a half-shout in order to be heard over the sound of the engines. "Strike Team A, headed by Inspector Arishima, will do a fast-rappel and secure the area surrounding the establishment of any civilian bystanders. Strike Team B, which I will lead personally, will land on the rooftop, enter the nightclub, and capture Shinya Kogami. When the target has been acquired, local Akita authorities will be called in to manage crowd control if necessary, but we won't remain. Once we have Kogami, our orders are to head back to Nona Tower immediately and deliver him to Sibyl. Is that understood?"

There was a chorus of _Yes, Inspector!_ Akane nodded, satisfied, and belted herself into the seat across from Arishima. Her assault rifle was an unwieldy burden, so she rested it on her lap. She noticed Arishima taking apart his magazines and checking each individual nonlethal round.

"What are you doing?" she asked curiously. She hadn't expected a rookie fresh out of the Academy to be so meticulous about his weaponry. It was something Kogami would have done.

"Department policy, Inspector's Handbook, Chapter 6, Paragraph 8, Section 3: 'The individual Department officer is responsible for the safety and proper functioning of his own firearm.'" Arishima raised an eyebrow and slid the magazine home. It slotted into the rifle with a steely _click_. "I'm just following regulations, ma'am."

"These weapons came direct from the armory," Akane pointed out.

The rookie rolled his eyes. "And that means what, exactly?"

 _He's suspicious of everything, isn't he?_ Akane shook her head. "What about your Dominator, then? You can't check the clip on that. Do you hire a hacker to examine its source code?"

"Of course not," Arishima replied. "But I _do_ sleep with my Dominator."

Now it was Akane's turn to roll her eyes. "That's not the only thing you sleep with," she muttered under her breath. She had seen both Shion and Yayoi follow Inspector Arishima into the Data Hive yesterday, and it hadn't looked as if they were there to discuss area stress levels.

* * *

The beautiful jeweled spires of Tokyo, all reflective glass pandemonium, wearing soft blue and purple lights like an old woman weighed down by gemstones, passed below and beneath the churning blades of the aircraft. As they flew north, their path slowly banking to the west, their backdrop became winding highways of brushed asphalt and the sinuous lines of the Shinkansen, whose track seemed to flow over Japan like a length of fine ribbon adorning a beauty contestant. Then concrete gave way to thatched rectangles of pure green—fields of _Camellia sinensis,_ stretching for kilometers in every direction. The air smelled of mint, here, beneath the tang of the jet fuel.

Then even tea gave way to something else. Hyper-oat fields filled the cockpit's viewport, extending like a blight upon the surface of the earth. Akane closed her eyes and inhaled deeply, remembering the swaying height of the oats and how she and Kogami had run through them in search of Makishima.

When she'd come upon the body, after Kogami fired his last shot, Akane had been struck by how ordinary it seemed. Shogo Makishima was a criminal icon, a mastermind of chaos, almost a devil. But there he was lying among the oats—a frail, hungry-looking man bleeding out his last, his eyes sightless.

"Inspector Tsunemori," the co-pilot called, and Akane unstrapped herself and went to the cockpit doorway.

"What is it?" she asked.

"Akita," the pilot answered for his colleague. "We're approaching the designated LZ."

She needn't have asked—the 3D briefing had involved a flyover of Akita, and she recognized its stubby smokestacks and the seaweed-colored harbor that seemed to collect rickety-looking fishing trawlers and ancient freighters like mildew growing on a puddle. The holographic HUD showed the location of the _Neosalanx,_ the nightclub where Lor Sam Pau was apparently sheltering Kogami. They were approaching the harbor from the far side of the city, the Ospreys flying fast and low, gliding over the buildings.

Akane left the cockpit and addressed her troops a final time. "We'll be at the target in moments. Strike Team A, prepare for drop-off."

Half of the Enforcers stood and buckled themselves to the rappel line. There weren't any frightened faces, and for good reason, she thought. Team A would have an easy time of it simply cordoning off the area. Team B would face the real risks.

Arishima brushed past her to attach himself to the line. "Inspector," he murmured.

After about thirty seconds, the co-pilot gave the all-clear and the drop-off light flashed on. The rear doors of the C-22 Osprey whined open and revealed a whirlwind of flying paper, gravel, and trash not fifty feet below them. They were hovering over an alleyway.

"Go!"

With practiced ease, the members of Strike Team A rappelled down the line, each man seeming to vanish from the back of the aircraft. Akane kept count. When the last member—Arishima—disappeared, she gave the order for the aircraft to position itself above the _Neosalanx._ From her spot in the rear of the C-22, Akane saw the other aircraft dropping off its own portion of the assault team. The deafening sound of the rotors seemed to be having an invigorating effect on the town of Akita—as their aircraft moved into position over the nightclub, Akane could see people begin to spill out from the doors of a nearby coffin hotel, their confusion and fear backlit onto the water by the C-22's blinding spotlights.

 _We just need the element of surprise for a few more moments,_ she thought.

"Inspector, we're in position," the pilot called. "You can begin your drop."

"You heard the man," Akane said. "Let's move out." She attached herself to the rear of the line and watched as her team began to rappel down onto the waiting rooftop.

Nami Chisaka was in front of her in line. As the Enforcers smoothly took their turns, the girl hesitated, her hands trembling on her assault rifle, and glanced back at Akane.

"You went through the simulations at the Academy?" Akane asked.

"Yes," Chisaka replied, cheeks flushing.

"It's no different than that," Akane lied, and pushed the rookie officer forward. After a moment of hesitation, Chisaka gripped the rope, closed her eyes, and disappeared.

"Maintain this position," Akane called over her shoulder.

"Yes, ma'am," the co-pilot answered.

And with that, she followed her team. The last time she'd done tactical simulations of this nature had been in the Academy, just like Chisaka, but she tried not to let that on. The wind whirled into her face and for a moment gravity seemed to have turned her wrong-side-up, but it was only for a moment—then she was gripping the rope and sliding to a stop on the fresh green lawn of the _Neosalanx's_ rooftop.

She let go of the rope and looked around, frowning. It _was_ grass that grew in hilly clusters under her feet. There was also a swimming pool—closed for the season, apparently—and a bar, tables, a racquetball court… _Is this a nightclub or a luxury hotel?_ she thought, and shook her head. It was of no consequence, though; no matter how fancy the surroundings, Kogami was hiding somewhere in this building. She would tear every plank from the structure if it meant returning him to her.

"Inspector?" a voice called, and she saw that it was Isao Egusa. The Enforcer had his assault rifle trained on the only doorway that seemed to lead to the interior of the club.

She went over and conferred with her team, keeping her voice pitched low. "Is it locked?"

"Negative." Egusa demonstrated by reaching out to push the door open a few inches. It wasn't even latched. "It's like they weren't expecting to be attacked, at least not from the roof. Are you sure this is the right place?"

"No," Akane said after a moment. "But Sibyl is."

She swung the door open the rest of the way, and, training her weapon on whatever occupied the darkness of the stairwell, began to descend the steps. "I'm on point," she murmured. "Egusa, you're next. The rest of you follow along."

Her men acknowledged the order, and she heard nothing but fast breathing and combat boots scuffing on floors as they slowly made their way into the _Neosalanx._ She held her rifle with a death-grip, trying not to startle as the Enforcers above her made unexpected noises. There didn't seem to be anyone inside the nightclub—there was no music, no laughing, no singing. It was almost as if the whole thing were a trap…

 _Don't,_ she thought, shaking her head slightly. _That's a Kogami thought, and I can't afford to go paranoid right now._ But the thought lingered, and she realized that Egusa, if he were in on the plan, would only have to fire a round into the back of her head for Sibyl to silence her forever.

The stairwell ended in another door. This one, too, was unlocked, and she swung it open as soundlessly as she could. It led onto a carpeted hallway with several doors on either side and one—which she presumed was another stairway, for it didn't feel as if they were on the ground floor yet—at the far end.

With gestures, she ordered her team to search and secure the rooms. Somehow, she knew Kogami wasn't here. With Egusa behind her, she went to the door at the end of the hall and opened it.

Another stairwell, but only one level. Nodding her head, Akane descended it, then tried the handle at the bottom. Locked.

"Figures," she said softly, and gestured to Egusa. "Do you have the kit?"

"Yes," he replied, and began to search among the pockets of his tactical vest for the lock-override tool. It was a handy piece of Sibyl kit: with a precalculated collection of codes for every conceivable electronic lock in existence, the tool would make quick work of any barriers. She watched as Egusa attached the device to the lock and punched in the command sequence. The Enforcer smiled. "Watch this."

Fifteen seconds passed. Akane looked at her watch, then at Egusa. The man frowned and poked at the tool's keypad, and they waited for another minute or two.

Nothing happened.

"Well?" Akane demanded.

"It's a good lock," Egusa muttered. "We'll have to establish a radio link-up with Sibyl, let the old girl crack it herself. She'll have no trouble with that, I assure you."

"Kogami is in there," Akane said slowly. "I can feel it."

"So?"

"We're not waiting." She removed the lock-override tool and handed it back to Egusa, who looked confused—until she spread her feet apart and pointed her assault rifle at the lock. She flicked the toggle to _Lethal_ and took careful aim.

"Are you sure about this, boss? It wouldn't take Sibyl long—"

"Get ready," Akane said. And with a deep inhalation of breath, she held it, then squeezed the trigger. The gun bucked in her arms, seemed to kick her right in the sternum, and gave off a sound that might as well have been an exploding grenade for how loud it was in the enclosed stairwell.

The lock was gone, blasted clean apart—as was part of the door itself, which now only hung on one hinge, and rather poorly so. Akane took another breath and kicked it open with all her strength, then rushed into the room, her weapon poised with her finger on the trigger. She heard her Enforcers filing in behind her.

The room they entered seemed to be a private office of some sort. Its walls were the uniform reflective gray of holo-screens, and the furniture was a throwback to the pre-war style of the early '00s. There was a steel desk and a swivel chair and a couch, but that wasn't what drew Akane's attention—it was the four men who gaped at her (well, three seemed to be gaping; the third might have been unconscious) from across the room.

"Who the fuck are you?" one of the men yelled, his tone one of pure, unbridled fury. "Do you know where you are? Do you know who this _is?"_ As he spoke, Akane's team flooded into the room from the stairwell and took up positions arrayed beside her. To a man, they pointed their rifles in the same direction.

"MWPSB!" Akane shouted, and trained her own rifle on the men. "Don't move!"

"I don't believe it," said another of the men. "This is impossible." He looked at them as if they had committed some sort of crime. "Don't you realize that we have an _arrangement_ with the Prefecture?" His eyes were large and wet—he almost appeared to be weeping. "You can't touch us—this is _Lor Sam Pau,_ you assholes."

"This is the Ministry of Welfare's Public Safety Bureau," Akane said icily, and gestured with her rifle. "Now get away from that man. Along the wall, hands over your head. Egusa, arrest these men."

"Yes, ma'am."

"You're making a big mistake," the tallest of the men said over his shoulder. "When word gets back to the Prefecture, your bosses are going to tear you a new one. Trust me."

As Akane approached the fourth man, the one who seemed to be unconscious, she felt the blood begin to drain from her face. "Radio the Tower," she told Chisaka. "Inform them that we want an antenna link-up for our Dominators."

"Yes, Inspector."

The tall man snorted. His hands, she saw, were covered in dried blood. _They didn't,_ she thought silently, but as she neared the sight it became clear that oh yes, they had. Shinya Kogami sat tied to a wooden chair, his head slumped down, his body naked. Ropes coiled around his wrists and ankles and chest made him seem to be one with the chair, and welts on his skin and deep wounds on his thighs and arms seemed to make it unlikely that he was alive. _Oh, god, Kogami. What have they done to you?_ Akane dropped to her knees and cradled his face in her hands—when she raised it, she saw that he _was_ unconscious, and judging by his pulse, nearly dead.

"We need a medkit here right now," she snarled to Chisaka, who jumped and gazed at her wide-eyed. "Radio Arishima to bring his men inside. _I want that antenna link."_

"Do you think our Crime Coefficients matter?" the tall man said in disbelief. "Those numbers don't mean a thing for us, girl. We're _connected,_ see?"

Akane was about to speak, but the only man who hadn't spoken—and the one she presumed was Lor Sam Pau—raised his hand and murmured to his companions, "Be quiet."

The tall man, whose face was ugly, with a nose shaped like a turnip, Akane thought, said, "Why, boss? You know they can't do anything to us."

"I said, _be quiet_."

"He understands," Akane said softly, and began to untie the ropes that bound Kogami to the chair. The blood that caked his nude flesh was the color of rust, as if someone had slathered him with paint. His breath was worryingly ragged, and both of his eyes were black and blue. He looked like the last man standing in a brawl.

Lor Sam Pau gazed at her in silence. Akane thought, _If Kogami dies, I'll kill you. Even if the Dominators don't work, I'll kill you. I'll kill you with my bare hands._ Some of her fury must have gotten across, for Pau swallowed and looked away.

"Egusa."

Working together, Akane and the Enforcer laid Kogami out on the ground. While doing so, they realized that he had a broken leg. Akane applied a splint as best she could, using one of her kevlar pads and adhesive bandages.

"He looks rough," Egusa said. "We'll need to do a transfusion on the flight back to the Tower."

"Agreed." Akane ran her hands through Kogami's sweat-and-blood-caked hair one last time—he looked so peaceful, she thought, even lying broken and wounded, and near death—before climbing to her feet and wiping her bloodied hands on her vest. "Chisaka, get a stretcher and carry Mr Kogami to the Osprey."

"Yes, Inspector."

Now that killing (or dying, Akane supposed) was off the table, Nami Chisaka was a model of composure and practical efficiency—she arranged matters so that Kogami was gently slid onto a stretcher and carried to the roof. When she and her men had gone, Akane went over to Egusa and spoke in a low tone.

"Egusa."

He looked at her curiously. "Ma'am?"

Akane licked her lips and gazed at the three men huddled against the wall. She felt like baring her teeth. "You have a certain reputation."

The Enforcer frowned. "Ma'am?" he repeated.

"You were written up," Akane said softly. "I looked at your file. Restraining a suspect and beating him with your Dominator. It's not exactly Department policy, is it?"

His face seemed to crumple into an inscrutable expression. "No, Inspector."

"Why did you do it?"

Egusa opened his mouth to speak—probably a denial, she thought—but seemed to think better of it. "Sometimes a perp deserves what he gets from Sibyl."

"And?" Akane prompted.

"And sometimes he deserves more than he gets."

 _Perfect._ "I agree with you, Egusa. Sometimes a suspect deserves to be beaten to within an inch of their life." Akane glanced rather obviously at Lor Sam Pau as she spoke.

Understanding appeared in the Enforcer's eyes. His lips quirked in a half-smile, and he gave her an almost imperceptible nod.

"You men bring Pau's associates and follow me," Akane ordered. "We're going to rendezvous with Inspector Arishima downstairs."

When her men had filed out ahead of Pau's flunkies, Akane lingered in the doorway and flashed the crime lord a toothy grin. Some previously untapped part of her emotions seemed to have taken over. She wondered, with genuine curiosity, whether her Crime Coefficient could indeed be in the danger zone. She felt as if anything were possible.

"This is for Kogami," Akane told Pau, and closed the door.


	10. Flight

It was done, and Akane waited for the other shoe to drop—for regret, guilt, or even base satisfaction to pour like sticky sap through her body. But all she felt was a curious gladness. That it was _over._ But also because she had done what, deep down, she had really wanted to do. She was a Public Safety Bureau officer and she had just ordered three men to die without a trial. Oh, she was within the letter of the law, if not its spirit. And probably the young Akane Tsunemori, even the version of her from just a year or two ago, would gaze at this cold-eyed new Akane Tsunemori with horror or disgust, much as she had gazed upon Masaoka and Kagari and even Kogami on that dim day in the rain so many nights ago. But she was okay with that. Kogami's wounds had been avenged, and right now _that_ was more important than anything else.

The Dominator was still warm in her hands, as it usually was when the energies captured inside it were allowed to escape for a little while. In Destroy-Decomposer mode, the thunderous flesh-devouring rounds could sometimes frighten, but Akane had long since grown used to them. She'd taken down dozens of perps with Decomposers by now. It was old hat, and she didn't even flinch when pulling the trigger anymore.

 _They deserved it,_ Akane thought, and swallowed some of the saliva pooling on the inside of her cheek. She took a deep and heartfelt breath and slowly, as if the act were against her better judgment, lowered the weapon. The tip of the Dominator hesitated as she aimed it at the floor. Then she slid it into its holster, and it was like a weight being lifted off her chest.

What remained of Lor Sam Pau and his cronies lay splattered over half of the _Neosalanx's_ kitschy lounge area. She could no longer distinguish where the crime lord ended and where his men began—it was a red paste of flattened humanity, like an explosion in a tomato sauce factory. Chunks of jellied fat and bloody gristle and powdery white bone had been tossed over the faded upholstery of the nightclub's high-backed chairs, as if handfuls of flour and pomegranate juice had been spilled everywhere. The smell was horrific—it always was—but Akane could only detect ozone, the aftermath of the Dominators' work.

Akane looked over at the big Enforcer, Isao Egusa, who was taking long drags of a stubby cigarette, and slowly shook her head. She had expected trouble after reading his name on the squad list, but he'd been just the right tool for the job. She wasn't sure whether that spoke well of him or poorly of her.

The other Enforcers were gathered outside the nightclub, where a small crowd of curious locals had assembled. Most, Akane supposed, had come to see the spectacularly unusual sight of _policemen_ loitering around Lor Sam Pau's club. Her men handled crowd control, which wasn't proving too difficult, as they wore fearsome tactical gear and active-camo; a few appeared to vanish and rematerialize out of patterns on the walls of the rusty warehouses. A few feet away from Arishima, and near the doorway so as to avoid contact with human remains as much as possible, stood Nami Chisaka, a greenish tinge to her cheeks. The girl had locked her eyes upon one of the blobs of flesh and did not seem capable of looking away. In fact, she looked as if she might throw up at any moment.

Akane took a few discreet steps away from the girl. "How is Kogami?" she asked.

Chisaka swallowed, and managed to tear her eyes away from the red stain that had been Lor Sam Pau. "The medkit has stabilized Mr Kogami. He's in the chopper. Pulse and respiration are within safe limits." She paused. "For now, anyway. He lost a _lot_ of blood."

Akane nodded. "Good. I know Kogami—he'll live. There's been a change of plans. I'll be returning to Nona Tower alone, right now, without the rest of the squad."

Arishima looked at her, his eyes narrowing. "I didn't receive those orders."

"You just did," Akane said sweetly, and, picking up her assault rifle, she nodded toward the nightclub's deserted entrance. "Chopper 2 will return the other strike teams to headquarters. Inform the local Akita authorities that there was a minor disturbance here and that we've taken Lor Sam Pau into custody. By the time anybody investigates his whereabouts, the cleaners will have scraped him off the floor." She looked over the red mess and wrinkled her nose. She thought that she could see an intact eyeball under one of the gaming tables. It seemed to be staring at her. "Get a clean-up team in here soon, Inspector."

"You'll have to find somebody else to carry out those orders."

Halfway to the exit, Akane looked back. "What did you say?"

"I can't carry out those orders, ma'am."

"I've been given command of this operation, Inspector Arishima," Akane said, facing him. "The Sibyl System itself gave me that authority."

"I am aware of your seniority, ma'am." Arishima seemed to be relishing his ability to contradict her. "However, my orders state that I am to accompany the fugitive Shinya Kogami until he is safely brought back to the Sibyl Sphere."

Akane's retort died on her lips. She stared at Arishima with a slight frown. _He's been inside the Sphere? I thought I was the only one Sibyl trusted with that knowledge._ A rookie fresh out of the Academy would have no business knowing of the Sibyl Sphere, let alone being in direct communication with the brains comprising the System. There was more to Itaru Arishima than met the eye, that was for sure.

"Very well," Akane said. "But Kogami's still losing blood. We're leaving _now_." Her tone brooked no argument.

Arishima gave her a very slight bow.

Tamping down on the flash of anger that threatened to escalate the tension already crackling between them, Akane turned and led the way back up the stairs. The C-22 was still waiting on the _Neosalanx's_ roof, perched there like an impatient gargoyle. At her signal, the pilots lowered the ramp, and Akane and Arishima dashed across an immaculate racquetball court to the waiting aircraft. They climbed aboard and within seconds were gaining altitude, Akita expanding beneath them as if it were a 3D map being zoomed out on a holo-screen. By the time they reached cruising altitude, the freighters in the harbor were nothing more than blotchy specks far below, rusty nails lying in a pail of brackish water.

 _Now we'll see if Choe Gu-sung is all he's cracked up to be,_ Akane thought. She didn't want to contemplate what might happen if he wasn't.

* * *

"I _thought_ you might be here."

The voice made every muscle in Makishima's body clench, coming as it did in the one place in the Sibyl System where he thought he had true solitude. _No one should know about this place,_ he thought in irritation, even as curiosity rose in him like a small terrier, lifting its nose to sniff at the air. The only person in the world who _could_ know about it—Choe Gu-sung—was dead. Makishima raised his head a fraction of a centimeter and looked at the doorway, expecting to see Hiroki Masuda. Perhaps the hacker was more capable than he'd expected.

But it wasn't Masuda, and Makishima's mouth actually fell open in surprise. It was _Kagari,_ in the digital flesh, with the same annoying grin that Makishima had learned to hate so much. The man's self-image was different this time, however. Rather than skinny jeans and a half-buttoned dress shirt accessorized with a gaudy red tie, the ex-Enforcer wore a sharp business suit. It looked as out of place on him as a Hawaiian shirt would look on Makishima.

"Who told you about this place?" Makishima demanded. Then his eyes narrowed. "No, answer this first: _how_ did you get here? Masuda told me that all ways in or out of the System had been closed."

"It's good to see you too," Kagari said, and ignored Makishima's questions. Instead he took a few steps around the small apartment, his eyes studying the dirty linoleum, rusted electric hob, and ancient rice cooker. Outside of the kitchenette, little else was better. The living space was scarcely larger than an average Tokyo bathroom, and contained only a 2046 Sony holographic television—one of the big old ones, from before the development of graphene transistors—and a sorry-looking green couch, the cushions sagging in the middle. "Nice place. Cozy, you know?"

The look in Makishima's eyes was not one that Kagari seemed to like. The Enforcer coughed and quickly lowered his eyes. He took another slow circuit of the apartment, though he refrained from approaching the kitchenette, as if he were afraid that Makishima would strike him with a frying pan or slice him with one of the knives sticking out of the block.

"How did I get here?" Kagari shrugged. "I used a program that Choe wrote me. Well, Choe's AI." He shook his head and looked at Makishima. "They're almost the same, aren't they? I mean, the real Gu-sung was pretty close to a computer anyway."

"How did you know about this place?"

Kagari lowered himself to the green couch. His expression turned to one of vague alarm when he kept falling into it. He finally pried himself free and settled for a perch on the armrest. "Your childhood home? That was Kogami. He figured it out. Which surprised Shion, I'll tell you. She had a good chunk of our Division's computer analysis time devoted to running psychological profiles on you, attempting to cross-reference your crimes to your experiences. But nobody could ever figure out _where_ you lived."

"But Shinya Kogami did."

Kagari squinted at him. "Right. Does that bother you? I know you two have a, uh, connection."

 _Does it bother me that I keep losing to Kogami, that he keeps proving himself superior to me, that ever since I encountered him my plans, my hopes, my ambitions and my desires keep leading to nothing?_ Makishima closed his eyes tightly and bit down on the inside of his cheek. When he opened them, a shock of blond hair had fallen over one eye, but he seemed to have greater control of himself. "No," he finally said, and came round the kitchenette counter to join Kagari in the living space. He plopped down on the sofa with a sigh and stared out of the one grimy window, a three-foot square pane of dirty acrylic that overlooked an alleyway. "It doesn't bother me, Shusei."

The ex-Enforcer went silent for a few moments, and when Makishima glanced over at him, he found the man unabashedly studying him. When he saw Makishima looking right back, a quick smile appeared on his face. "Well, I believe you." His words were contradicted by the look on his face. The look said, _You're such a liar._

"I grew up in this house," Makishima said, and looked at the peeling yellow wallpaper. It was as if the intervening decades hadn't happened at all—the apartment was precisely as he remembered it. "I used to sit and watch nature documentaries on this very television. Did you know what I wanted to be when I grew up?"

Kagari shifted on the armrest. He crossed his arms and shook his head, looking supremely uncomfortable.

"A wildlife counselor," Makishima said, and let his head fall back onto the sofa. "A specialist who treats animals with emotional disorders."

The other man didn't respond. After a few moments of staring at the ceiling, remembering, Makishima roused himself. There were things to do, after all.

"Why have you come?"

"Akane and Choe wanted me to tell you that the attack will take place in twelve hours. We can't tell you _how,_ in case someone in the Sibyl System can read your thoughts or memories, but that's when it will happen. They want you to be ready."

"I'll be sure to get a good night's sleep."

"Right." Kagari cleared his throat and made as if to stand. "Well, I'd better get back. I'm supposed to help Choe with things."

"You can't go. I need your help."

The ex-Enforcer paused by the doorway. He turned back and frowned. "What?"

 _It isn't really your apartment. Don't fall into the illusion of memory—none of it is real._ Makishima rubbed his eyes with the heels of his palms. "There have been... complications. I've learned things about Sibyl that require a change of plans. I need your assistance."

 _"How?"_

"I need you to tell Tsunemori to go to Okaba Street, in Tokyo, and investigate the Senguji Industries office there. I can't tell you why, but the attack may need to be delayed."

Kagari made a strangled sound, and when Makishima looked at him, his face was pale. "We can't. That's not an option, Shogo. Listen, I can't tell you any details about what's gone down, but there _really_ isn't any alternative. We rolled the dice and Sibyl knows what's happened. We need to move _now._ "

"Sibyl knows," Makishima repeated, and his mouth twisted as though he had bitten into a lemon. "Oh, I'm sure he does."

Kagari blinked. "Who?"

"Nevermind." Makishima seemed to uncoil himself and stood. He looked dispassionately at Kagari. "If Tsunemori can't do it, find somebody else who can. This needs to be done, Shusei. We don't have a choice. Remember: Okaba Street in Tokyo. Senguji Industries. Check every square foot of their offices and laboratory, check their computer systems, check _everything._ Then come back and tell me what you've found."

"We only have twelve hours before they're coming," Kagari said dully. "Twelve."

For the first time in a long time, a smile found its way onto Makishima's face. "Then I suppose you'd better hurry."

Clapping the ex-Enforcer on the shoulder, Makishima left the apartment.

* * *

When Arishima woke from his nap, he started in on Kogami right away. "He doesn't look so impressive to me." The Inspector's eyes flicked with scorn over Kogami's bloodied features.

Akane, in the middle of conferring with the co-pilot, looked back at the cargo bay. This being the return trip, it was deserted, its dozens of seats sitting empty—Kogami was one of the only passengers, his body lying sprawled across a few of them, beaten and bloodied and mercifully unconscious. Akane's heart ached just to look at him; she wanted to go over and nurse him back to health. But she couldn't. There was much to do, and neither of them could be allowed to rest. That was where Sibyl had the advantage over them—it needed no rest.

Arishima used one arm to support himself as the C-22 bucked amid turbulent air currents, his dismissive gaze fixed upon Kogami's swollen face. "A simple black market dealer like Pau did this to him?" The Inspector clucked his tongue and shook his head. "And I'd heard that Division One was full of tough guys. That'll teach me to listen to rumors."

Akane felt her cheeks grow hot with fury. _He's saying that now, but if Kogami were awake he wouldn't dare. One look from Shinya and Arishima would piss himself._ She really didn't like the smarmy Inspector. More to the point, though, she couldn't imagine how he had been assigned to her Division. It _was_ true: Division One was full of the Bureau's most ambitious and most capable, and those who were selected for it were usually borderline cases, sure, but _productive_ ones. It took a Masaoka to produce a Ginoza, and Ginoza's statistics had been the highest in the PSB despite his adherence to orthodoxy. And for a Ginoza to flourish, _Officer's Handbook_ and all, it took a Kagari and a Karanomori and a Kunizuka...

 _And a Kogami,_ she thought.

"I'll enjoy his execution," Arishima said. "Do you think Sibyl will let me watch?"

"Why don't you go back to sleep, Itaru?" she asked, and turned away. The rookie stared at her for a moment, waiting for a reply, and then shrugged and lowered himself into the seat next to Kogami.

"Are you ready?" Akane whispered.

The laptop, which she'd removed from her tactical kit and hidden beneath her seat, gave a flash of acknowledgement from its screen. Akane glanced at Arishima, saw that he was occupied by the sight of the Japanese countryside passing below them, and bent down to retrieve the laptop's fiber-optic cable. She carried the spool toward the cockpit, where the pilot and co-pilot were immersed in flying the aircraft, and when both seemed occupied by their instruments, Akane connected it to the navigation computer. Instantly the cabin lights flickered, and she gave the co-pilot's back a concerned glance. But nobody remarked upon it.

 _Now it's Gu-sung's turn. I hope he doesn't take long._ Judging from the distant lights on the horizon, Tokyo was less than half an hour away. Once they'd seized control of the aircraft, they would need to move fast—since Makishima's last attack on Sibyl, the Japanese military had stationed dozens of rapid-reaction forces around the capital city, including light aircraft and anti-air missiles. There was no margin for error. They needed to land as soon as possible.

"Do you think Sibyl will approve?"

Akane looked up, trying to wedge herself in front of the fiber-optic cable as best she could. Fortunately for her, Arishima was staring intently at her face. "What?"

Arishima nodded to her Dominator. "I _said,_ do you think Sibyl will approve that you held up the capture of Shinya Kogami simply to set up a radio link with the Tower for something as petty as revenge? Was shooting Pau really that important to you?"

"The Sibyl System has never second-guessed my judgment before," Akane said. "Lor Sam Pau and his men were known criminals with highly elevated Crime Coefficients, and as such it was my responsibility to deal with them." She shrugged. "So I did."

Arishima nodded to Kogami. "But the mission was to _capture_ this man, not settle scores."

"The mission is never about one man," Akane said. "Our goal as law enforcement is to keep society safe, to protect its citizens. We do that using the tools the Sibyl System has given us—in our case, as Bureau officers, the Dominator. You make it sound like an extrajudicial killing."

"What was Pau's Crime Coefficient?" Arishima asked curiously. "Couldn't you have brought him in for therapy?"

Akane tried not to let her irritation show on her face. _Is he doing this on purpose, trying to play the good guy?_ The rookie reminded Akane of herself, that first day on the job, when Masaoka had seemed so gruff and Kogami so frightening. The day that she had shot Kogami in the back, to Kagari's everlasting amusement.

"It was over four-hundred," she said coolly. "Paralyzing him was never a possibility."

"If you say so."

 _I do,_ Akane said nastily to herself, and turned back to the cockpit just in time to notice the pilot exchanging hushed words with the co-pilot.

"What is it?" she asked.

The co-pilot glanced back at her. "Well, ma'am, we, uh, seem to be having some issues here."

"Issues?" Akane demanded, as relief flooded through her. "We have Japan's most wanted fugitive in the back of this aircraft and you're telling me you're having _issues?"_

"Yes, Inspector. Our heading has changed, and we don't know why."

 _Thank you, Choe._ "Where are we headed now?" Akane demanded.

The pilot consulted a hologram of the terrain that surrounded the Osprey. It spun slowly in front of them like a glittering chandelier of laser light. "As near as I can tell, ma'am, somewhere to the north of the city."

"This is unacceptable." _This is perfect._

"We are attempting to regain control, ma'am."

"What's happening?" Arishima had noticed the commotion and was coming up the aisle, bracing himself against the seats as the aircraft was thrown around by turbulence. "Is something wrong?"

As if in answer, a loud whine came from outside of the cabin, and a moment later the aircraft began a wide banking turn. Akane braced herself on the cockpit doorway, her fingers resting on the handle of her Dominator. _He'll do it any moment now._ The sound of the engines grew louder, as if they were picking up speed, a fact that was confirmed a second later by the pilot.

"We're gaining speed. Losing altitude. Nothing I'm trying is working." The pilot turned to his colleague. "Get on the secure line to Tokyo Base 9. Tell them we've got an emergency, that we've lost all control and might have to ditch."

"They're going to ask what's wrong, sir."

"I don't know!" For a moment, the pilot seemed ready to throw up his hands in frustration. "It looks like a software glitch. As far as I can tell, nothing's physically wrong with the plane. It just won't listen to us. All command functions have been locked out."

"Roger."

Arishima came to stand next to Akane in the cockpit doorway, a frown on his face as he scanned the ship's useless controls. "What's wrong?"

The pilot glanced back. "As I told the Senior Inspector, sir, we've lost control of the aircraft. I don't know why. It seems as if a new course has been laid into the navigation computer, but that's impossible. On a mission of this importance, nothing but the Sibyl System itself has that authority."

"Sir," the co-pilot broke in, his face ashen. "I'm not getting _anything_ from Tokyo Base 9. Not even static."

The pilot stared at his high-tech cockpit as if it had betrayed him. The holographic displays and computer-assisted controls were very pretty to look at, but completely useless now that Choe had locked them out. In a way, Akane thought, it was the same thing that Sibyl had done to Japanese society—locked out the controls and changed course. The pilot finally shook his head. "There's nothing for it, then. We'll have to ditch." He looked apologetically back at Akane and Arishima. "I'm sorry, ma'am. I'm sorry, sir. There's nothing I can do."

"Kogami is wounded," Akane protested. She hoped that her acting would be good enough to carry her through this last performance. "There's no way he would survive ditching from aircraft in his condition."

"Call for a pick-up," Arishima ordered the pilot. "We'll need to continue on to the Tower once we land."

"I told you, sir, the radio isn't working. We have no communications. We could plunge into the ground at any second—it's not safe here. We have to leave." Saying so, the pilot unbuckled his seatbelt and went to a storage compartment, where he retrieved four parachutes. "Put these on."

Akane shook her head. "I have a mission to fulfill. I won't leave Kogami. Somebody has to stay with the aircraft to ensure that he doesn't escape again. But there's no need for the rest of you to risk your lives. I'm ordering you to ditch now and contact the Tower as soon as you can. Tell them that we've lost control of the aircraft."

The pilot seemed to look at her with a new respect. He finished putting on his parachute and then gave her a low bow. "That is very brave of you, Senior Inspector. Very brave. I will call the authorities and tell them what has happened. _Reizo._ "

The co-pilot scrambled to his feet and also bowed to Akane. Then he ran after his superior to the cargo bay, where the rear doors were beginning to yawn open, sending gales of wind hurtling through the cabin.

"Put this on," Akane said, and shoved a parachute into Arishima's arms. The Inspector was watching her in silence, a crease running between his eyebrows. She prayed that behind his thoughtful expression suspicions weren't being formed. He took the parachute automatically and began to buckle it around himself, his movements slow and distracted.

"Why don't we put a parachute on Kogami and throw him out?" Arishima said suddenly.

Akane slid into the pilot's chair and made a show of examining the controls. In reality, she knew that Choe was ably flying the plane. She took the yoke and moved it around a little bit, but nothing happened. She could feel Arishima's stare burning into the back of her head.

"I told you why," she said quietly. "He's too injured. He wouldn't survive the fall."

"You don't know that."

"I know that it's a risk we can't take," Akane said. " _Now_ who's endangering the mission?"

She continued with her pantomime piloting, but her attention was wholly focused on watching Arishima in the reflection of the cockpit window. He was still standing there, his parachute half-buckled, a look on his face that was uncomfortably close to one of understanding.

"You have your orders," Akane said. "Put on your chute and go. Tell Sibyl what happened."

For a tense moment, Akane thought he would attack her. But then, as if conceding the wisdom of her suggestion, he nodded and disappeared into the cargo bay, carefully closing the cockpit door behind him.

Akane waited until she heard the door seal shut before speaking. "Choe, are you there?"

"Where else would I be?" the hacker retorted, and she couldn't help smiling.

"You didn't have any problems taking control of the plane?"

Choe grunted. "Nothing that a little seat-of-the-pants coding couldn't fix."

 _He's good, I'll give him that._ "How long until we land?" she asked.

"Ask me again in five minutes. But we're getting close. You'd better go prep Kogami. He needs a tap put into his brain stem. Go shave the back of his head and get it disinfected."

"Right." As she climbed to her feet, Akane couldn't help herself. "Will I have a chance to speak with him? Before we leave, I mean?"

For a moment, she thought Choe hadn't heard her. Then he said, "I have something at the warehouse that will wake him up and make him feel like a million bucks. He won't like the crash afterwards, though. That'll be on you."

Akane smiled. "He'll live."

Choe grunted again.

She stood, and after taking one last look out of the aircraft's windows, she turned to open the cockpit door. She had only made it a few steps into the cargo bay when she felt it: a scream from the brain's most primitive centers, telling her that danger was near. She sensed movement behind her and whirled, her hand grasping for her Dominator, but she was struck in quick succession on her face, body, and legs, a neat series of economical punches and kicks that sent her sliding down the cargo bay on her back. When she looked up, blinking through a bloodied eye, she saw Arishima smiling at her, his Dominator leveled at her chest. He'd hidden behind the cockpit door, of course.

 _Idiot!_ Akane thought. _You should have predicted that. You're a detective. Would Kogami have let someone sneak up on him?_

She began to reach for her own weapon, which lay halfway between them on the cargo bay floor, but Arishima's smile widened—an invitation. "Go on," he urged, and gestured with the barrel of his Dominator, which suddenly seemed to have an endless depth to it. "Do it, Tsunemori. Please."

If he expected Akane to panic, he would be disappointed, she thought wryly. Sitting up, Akane worked her jaw until it gave an unpleasant _pop_ and opened without pain. "What's your plan, Arishima? Take Kogami and set him free? Wait until Sibyl hears about this."

"Oh, please," the younger man said with a snort. "Do you think we aren't aware of what you're doing, Tsunemori? Do you _really_ think Sibyl trusts you to deliver Shinya Kogami into its arms to face execution? The man you love?"

Akane stared at him. "Who are you?"

Now that whatever deception had existed between them was a moot point, Arishima seemed to change. Before he had been meek, anxious, his eyes constantly roaming around like those of a rat when a hawk is near, and his body had seemed designed to melt into whatever wall or doorway was closest to it. That was no longer the case. Arishima stood confidently, feet planted firmly on the deck of the Osprey, the arm that held the Dominator not wavering in the slightest. He had transformed into some other person, she thought. _He's not like young me at all. He's cynical, a liar. A chameleon._

Then it struck her. There was only one department that fielded just that type of officer. She studied him closely and nodded, certain of it.

"Did you figure it out?" Arishima asked, and raised a mocking eyebrow. "Well, in case you haven't, let me spell it out for you. I'm with Internal Affairs, Inspector Tsunemori, and I'm hereby placing you under arrest."

"On what charge?"

"For one, attempting to interfere with the lawful arrest of a fugitive. I'm sure we can come up with plenty more."

"Where's your evidence?"

Arishima chuckled. "I'm afraid we do things a little differently in Internal Affairs, Inspector. We have fewer checks and balances to bother with. Sibyl trusts us—and by extension, me—far more than it would ever trust someone like you."

"So you admit that you have no evidence."

"This—" Arishima used his Dominator to gesture at the out-of-control aircraft "—is all your doing, I'm sure. We'll figure everything out once we've gotten back to Nona Tower."

The muzzle of the Dominator was still pointed slightly to the side. Akane took her chance. With her legs coiled under her, she let six years of track and field launch herself toward the Dominator lying on the floor of the Osprey. Arishima's reaction was a half-second too slow. She seized the weapon with one hand and kept going, throwing herself directly at the startled Internal Affairs detective. They collided just as Arishima pulled the trigger.

 _"The weapon is not aimed at a target. The trigger has been locked. Please acquire a target and try again."_

Surprise and disbelief flooded Arishima's face even as they flew through the air. He may have had fifty pounds on her, but Akane had taken her martial arts lessons with Kogami very seriously indeed. The pain of their landing was muted by adrenaline—they seemed to be on top of each other, limbs every which way. Akane kept a tight grip on her Dominator and drove her knee into Arishima's gut as hard as she could. His attempt to wrestle the gun away from her abruptly became a choking gasp.

She managed to get halfway to her feet before Arishima responded. His kick was expertly aimed at her knee, but lacked power. Still, her leg buckled beneath her and she nearly went down. She turned the momentum into a roll, which got her enough room to stagger upright, the Dominator clutched in both hands.

Arishima tried to stand, found that he hadn't yet gained his breath, and collapsed into the seat behind him. He breathed heavily through his mouth and gazed at Akane with narrowed eyes, blood dripping down his cheek. Somehow—and she didn't remember doing it—she had taken off a good chunk of flesh beneath his left eye with her fingernail.

"You did it to my gun, too," he accused, and for a moment Akane didn't understand what he meant. Then she began to laugh. Arishima gestured to the Osprey, and as if in response, the aircraft's engines seemed to pitch lower, as though they were reducing power in preparation for a landing. "The same thing you did to the plane." He waved to the cockpit and took another shuddering gasp. " _Somehow._ "

"It's a good thing you were Internal Affairs," Akane responded. "If that's the best you can do, you would never have made it in my Division."

Arishima's sallow cheeks began to redden, and the blotchy color spreading across his face had the look of ugly bruises. One side of his face was swollen and larger than the other. Akane hoped she didn't look as bad, but she suspected she did.

"You hacked it," Arishima insisted, angrily.

"You were sleeping," Akane said. "I didn't need to hack anything. I took it out of your holster and replaced it with mine."

For a moment, Akane was sure the man would lunge at her. His eyes seemed to go red with rage and hatred. "How did you know?" The question was strangled and barely understandable.

"You should have known that Shion would realize there was something unusual about your Dominator," Akane said gently. "Her rooms are kitted out with every kind of sensor you can imagine. They picked up the fact that, unlike her own Dominator, yours never contacted Sibyl for the hourly authentication checks. She did some digging and found that your university records were added to the database a week before you were assigned to our Division. She was kind enough to let me know all of this before we left on our mission."

"That bitch," Arishima growled. "I'll kill her."

"I'm giving you a chance," Akane said levelly. "Take the parachute and go. You won't get another."

"I won't, will I?" Arishima wiped blood from his mouth and examined it on his hand. He rubbed his fingers together and smiled. Then—slowly, as if moving caused him great pain—he climbed to his feet, wavered there for a few seconds, and began to walk toward her. "I don't think you would shoot me, not with that gun. I've read your file. You're the honorable Akane Tsunemori, true believer in justice and law enforcement. You're _good._ " His smile was broken by a chipped tooth, and looked more like a pained grimace.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you," Akane advised him.

"You won't shoot me," Arishima insisted, and took another staggering step toward her. "Give me the gun, Tsunemori. I'll only book you on a misdemeanor. How does that sound?"

"It sounds like you want a Paralyzer to the face," Akane replied. " _Don't move._ "

"I'll give you a Paralyzer," Arishima snarled, and _moved._

 _He was faking it,_ Akane thought, and that was _all_ she had time to think, because Arishima was practically on top of her, and intending murder. She reacted without thought. Her training took over, and it was just as if Kogami had reached out to take the gun from her. The muzzle steadied as her elbow locked and her shoulders stiffened. One eye briefly closed as she took aim. Then the trigger grazed her fingertip—or perhaps it was the other way around. The Dominator seemed almost to inhale cosmic energies; there was an abrupt crackling of the air, a burst of ionization, a sharp smell of ozone, and—

The man known as Itaru Arishima, Internal Affairs detective of the Public Safety Bureau of Japan, aged 25, died instantly. The Destroy-Decomposer round that turned his skull and brain to a jellied mess kept going when it reached the back of his head. It went through the armored fuselage of the C-22 Osprey and took out most of the left wing.

With a groan of rending metal and the howling sound of the wind, the aircraft began to fall from the sky.


	11. Okaba

Author's note: So I've learned that writer's block is a real thing. Sorry for the glacial update pace. But no matter what, I will finish this story! A new chapter will be coming soon. Thanks for keeping up with it!

* * *

"It looks like a gene lab," Yayoi Kunizuka said, disbelief making her voice an octave higher than it usually was. "But that can't be right."

Shion lowered her Dominator and stepped over the mound of shattered glass that, a few seconds before, had been a mirrored window overlooking the Senguji laboratory floor. _So much for doing things the quiet way,_ she thought wryly. The room they were in contained a few chairs, a console, and several video monitors; it appeared to have been designed so that Senguji's executive team could observe the work being carried out below without being seen themselves.

"It is," Shion said, after giving the place a once-over.

Kunizuka looked at her in surprise.

Shion brushed some of the shards out of the way with her boot, the glass crunching underfoot like packed snow, and looked for exits. There was only one: a small, knobless steel door halfway down the length of the laboratory, set into the righthand wall. A soft red light pulsed above it. There was no obvious way to open it from the inside. Those wishing to leave would have to wait for the mechanism to be activated from, presumably, the observation room.

"I thought genetic engineering was illegal," Yayoi said, her nose wrinkling in confusion as she looked from Karanomori to the empty laboratory.

 _Yes, very illegal,_ Shion thought.

The genetic modification of the human organism had been outlawed decades before by the United Nations. Virtually every nation on earth had ratified the treaty, the only holdouts being those countries too technology-poor to employ such tech anyway. The agreement had occurred even before WWIII, before U.S. and Chinese nukes soared in gentle parabolae to kiss the edge of space and glide deathlessly to their chosen targets. The devastation's aftermath had done nothing to change the policy in Japan. Harshly proscribed, the MWPSB came down hard on suspected black market genetic alterations. Bio-synthetic grafts, the so-called cyborg implants, were another story—even fully mechanical organs were becoming popular with the middle class. But genes were forbidden, _had always_ been forbidden. In sixteen years of medicine and law enforcement Shion couldn't recall ever seeing a gene lab in person.

And now she was standing in the middle of one.

 _As Ginoza would say, there's a first time for everything._

"A one-way mirror," Yayoi murmured. "Cute." Her partner stepped past her and walked down the length of the laboratory, her Dominator still held at the ready, night-vision visor carefully sweeping each aisle before proceeding. "Their CEO was tight with Makishima, right?"

"Yes. Toyohisa Senguji. A real freak."

"Do you think Makishima had anything to do with setting up this place?"

Shion saw a cluster of holographic screens near the center of the laboratory and made her way toward them. "He sent us here, Yayoi. If what Kagari says is true, the man is on our side."

The other woman snorted and shook her head. Even doing _that,_ she managed to be beautiful, Shion thought with admiration. "I can only imagine what Kogami would do if he heard you say that."

An amused smile briefly curved Shion's lips. "He would be very upset, wouldn't he?" She left unmentioned what she had discovered long ago: that a furious Shinya Kogami was one of the better grades of aphrodisiacs. Jealousy and Yayoi Kunizuka went hand-in-hand, though. There was no need to stoke _that_ particular fire.

"This isn't a small-time operation."

"No," Shion agreed. The laboratory, apart from the exotic gene equipment, looked like any number of others she had seen during her postgrad years: an eclectic mixture of the industrial and the academic, with just a few personal touches by the researchers—large holo-posters of Talisman hung from the rafters, alongside a shabby-looking brown couch that looked as if it had seen better, and springier, days. The equipment, however, was state-of-the-art. A Hitachi gene-splicing machine, held precariously atop an ordinary microwave oven, was connected to several workstations and dozens of bio-vats by long runs of fiber-optic cable. It looked like a bizarre, prehistoric cyborg offshoot of an octopus.

"These things creep me out," Yayoi said from three aisles over. She was poking at one of the vats with the muzzle of her Dominator, as if she feared that someone might be hiding inside. "They look like coffins."

"They were designed to keep you from _needing_ a coffin," said Shion. "They were medical devices, back when."

The younger Enforcer blinked. "Then why'd they make them illegal?"

Shion slid into the chair that sat before the main holo-screen and pressed the power button on one of the workstations. After a silent moment, the networked computers began to rouse themselves and the holographic projectors sketched a desktop environment that hung in the air before her: composed of laser light and refracted echoes, folder icons, colored shapes, and nameless ideograms appeared like bright afterimages on low-flying Tokyo clouds. Like a skywriter's rippling trail, the words _Senguji Industries Medical_ floated gently in the background.

"Well, after they cured most big diseases, they realized there was nothing stopping them from going a step further. Not just _fixing_ problems, but preventing them from occurring in the first place. They wanted to second-guess natural selection, fix all of the problems that nature had left in our genetic code. At first it was harmless enough—insert a few genes in your baby and improve its IQ by twenty points. What parent wouldn't want that?"

Yayoi shrugged. "I don't see anything wrong with that."

Shion entered commands on the keyboard, her fingers curled easily over the keys, gliding smoothly from letter to letter. In less than a minute she'd found an unpatched hole, a suitable entry point for her own software. Her program went to work scouring the laboratory's database for records on whatever research had been conducted there.

"Shion?"

"Sorry. So, there _was_ nothing wrong with that, Yayoi. But what if you could go beyond intelligence and fix the biggest problem of all: aging? Back then scientists didn't realize that there was a cap to the human lifespan. They believed hundreds or thousands of years of life could be attained if only the technology could be mastered." Shion rolled her eyes. "It was a primitive time, okay? Anyway, they tried everything they could think of. Telomere therapy, resetting the genetic clock, even splicing salamander genes into the human genome. _Nothing_ worked."

"Why?"

Shion grinned. "If I knew, I would be very rich."

Suddenly Shion's radio squawked, and a voice echoed through the laboratory. Scratchy and hard to understand, it was nevertheless recognizable as Ginoza. _"Karanomori, are you there?"_

"Yes, Ginoza, we're here. Is everything all right?"

" _It might be nothing, but traffic just dropped off outside your building. The intersection is empty. Seems unusual for this time of day. Have you found anything yet?"_

"I've accessed their network and should have something downloaded in a few minutes."

" _Roger that. I'd make it as quick as you can. Hound Three out."_

When the radio had fallen silent, Kunizuka rolled her eyes. "I tell you, Shion, that man still believes he'll get his job as Senior Inspector back someday."

Shion lifted an eyebrow. "And how do you know he won't? Look at us now—three hounds off the leash and running wild."

"We have Tsunemori's authorization to be here," Yayoi pointed out, and went over to a row of steel cabinets. Picking one at random, she opened it and peered inside. It held dozens of glass spheres. She grabbed one and lifted it up to the light, squinting. "Hey, what's this thing?"

"It's a dissection vessel. It's meant to hold a human brain after autopsy."

Looking ill, the Enforcer carefully replaced the sphere in the cabinet, depositing it as gently as a priceless gem. The workstation beeped.

Shion turned back to the holographic cloud. With the finesse of a symphony's conductor, she flipped through pages of digital print-out, skimming as best she could, trying to discern the overall pattern or meaning. The data held everything—there were references to American neuroscience textbooks, Okinawan political tracts from the Fifties, even a table of the culinary likes and dislikes of a specific Tokyo neighborhood's citizens. None of it seemed to make any sense whatsoever. Who would go to the trouble of compiling such useless information?

"I give up," Shion said finally. "I don't know what any of this means."

Yayoi rested her chin on Shion's shoulder and peered at the floating lists of data. "Why not search for something specific?" she suggested.

"Like what?"

Yayoi bit her lip for a moment, thinking, and then said, "Makishima."

Shion tilted her head for a moment, considering. Then she nodded. As she input the query, she said over her shoulder, "You'll never trust him, will you?"

The Enforcer put her mouth closer to Shion's ear and said, _"Never."_

The results appeared in the cloud like a gathering storm. One was a high-resolution photograph of a clearly deceased Shogo Makishima. Autopsy photos. Makishima's chiseled features were somehow equally cold in death as they had been in life. His lifeless eyes seem to stare at them with frigid promise. Other photographs showed his brain being removed and encased in one of the glass spheres that Yayoi had discovered. And there were more than photographs. A 3D scan of Makishima's entire brain had been taken, along with a record of his nerve impulses, his blood type, his neuron count…

"Is this what he wanted us to find?" Yayoi asked, unsettled. "His own records? Why?"

"I don't think so. He would have told us." Shion entered a command that made the gory photographs of Makishima vanish. In their place floated lists of dozens of names. _"'Criminally Asymptomatic Candidates,'"_ Shion read slowly.

"Candidates for _what?"_

"I don't know." Shion ran a thumb across her lip and stared at the holograms in silence, seeing past them. "Let's backtrack a little, shall we?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well, we're opening this database at random and hoping to understand it. What if we search for the first thing they did after getting their hands on all this fancy equipment?"

The answer was unexpected. Both Enforcers frowned. Yayoi was the first to speak.

"Cloning," she said thoughtfully. "I thought it was illegal to clone human beings."

Shion nodded. "Not just any human beings. They wanted to clone _only_ criminally asymptomatic people. In fact, no one with an acceptable Crime Coefficient is a part of any of these data-sets."

Yayoi made a face. "What would a company like Senguji want with a bunch of freaks like Makishima?"

"Like Makishima," Shion repeated slowly. "Wait a second."

She did another search, this time of the _last_ experiments conducted in the laboratory. Dozens of files appeared, with names like _Makishima.1,_ _Makishima.2,_ _Makishima.3,_ and so on. The experiments had been carried out regularly until just three days before, when the word _Discontinue_ had been appended to each one.

The hair on the back of Karanomori's neck began to prickle. "Yayoi," she said slowly.

"Yes?"

"Go over to those bio-vats and open one of them."

The Enforcer peered over her shoulder, trying to make sense of the mass of data. "Why?"

"Just do it."

Shrugging, Kunizuka holstered her Dominator and went to the nearest vat. It took her a few tries to discover the trick of unlocking the door mechanism, but when she did, it slid open soundlessly.

Then she screamed.

Staring out at them, his eyes the gray of the ocean just before a typhoon, was Shogo Makishima. He neither saw nor heard a thing, and when they cut him open they discovered that he had been dead for three days.

In the other vats they found more clones of Makishima. Twenty-six of them.

* * *

Rapping politely on the mahogany-paneled door, Makishima opened it and stepped through. A false smile was already on his face, adhering to the skull like a clay-formed mask, but it was indistinguishable from the real thing. His body, like that of an athlete, was as rigorously trained as his mind.

The room into which he had entered was different than it had been two days before, which was not unusual in the Sibyl System. The blueprint of the System was Tokyo, always, but the details were subject to change. Places and objects resoundingly familiar became strange and new, depending on the day of the week, on unknown rhythms, on an unconscious collective urge that passed unnoticed in a state of unreality; and sometimes changed their very nature. Chronology, too, was haphazard at best. It was as if the occupants of the Sibyl System, those who were dreaming it into being, were themselves dreaming of a time before its creation… or perhaps that, in the first place, they could not agree _what_ to create—that their imaginations fought for precedence or influence.

The idea intrigued Makishima, so he filed it away for later thought.

In the room was a large glass-topped desk, at the head of which a captain of industry might sit before his loyal officers. In the captain's place sat Kurou Yamato, who seemed pinched and a little bit shrunken, as though he'd lost a few pounds. _Has he been hitting the gym?_ Makishima wondered, and thought: _No. He's ill, for sure._ But from what? _There are no diseases in the Sibyl System._ The Vice-Chairman's face was hollower than it had been at their last meeting—gone were the crinkled eyes like gobs of secretive honey and the reddish healthy-looking cheeks.

"Shogo." Yamato greeted him with a seated bow. "Please, sit down."

Makishima pulled out a chair roughly halfway down the length of the unnecessarily long executive table and plopped into it. The chair's leather armrests were cold and stiff, and as he'd just left the swimming pool, they clung to the skin of his elbows with an unpleasant sticky sensation. "Thank you," he said, and decided to bring his suspicions right out into the open. "Are you well?"

Yamato smiled, an expression that accentuated the dark rings shading his eyes. He seemed to be having trouble breathing. "You can't fool Shogo Makishima. No doubt the Public Safety Bureau had their hands full when you were running amok."

"The timing is what intrigues me," said Makishima pointedly.

Yamato nodded. "It was a massive strain. Chambers did his best and expended a great deal of effort."

"And that affects _you?"_

"I allow the Chairman to use my mind as a—as a _crutch,_ yes," Yamato explained with a wan smile. "It's tough on a man of my advanced years, I won't deny, but otherwise he would need to sleep for many days. And at this crucial juncture, that would be unacceptable, of course." The older man sighed. "I only wish his contact with you had been a success."

" _Contact?"_ said Makishima, and lifted both of his eyebrows. "That's what you call it?"

"Well, yes." Yamato blinked. "Don't tell me that you _resisted_ him? For god's sake, Shogo, why? You were chosen!"

"Chosen to be devoured by a monster?" Makishima inquired. "I would prefer a different way to die, thank you."

"Monster?" Yamato echoed. "Is that how you saw him?" The politician's face fell. He seemed genuinely disappointed in Makishima, though not actually angry with him. "Oh, Shogo, Chambers is not a _monster._ Far from it! He is different, yes, and his kind may not be able to live in our plane of existence for very long, but that does not make him a monster. Is a colossal squid a monster simply because a fisherman pulls it out of the sea? Of course not. I can't believe that you fought him, Shogo. He spoke so highly of you."

"Are you telling me that when Chambers speaks to you, he _doesn't_ look like a child's nightmare?" Makishima neglected to mention the fact that Chambers' appearance had preyed upon his own deeply-held fears.

"It is the imagination that decides what Chambers will look like. He can appear to be a beautiful young woman, a calm seascape, even a mirror image of oneself. It depends upon the individual's temperament, and, perhaps, his unique phobias and prejudices." The Vice-Chairman's tone made it clear where he ascribed blame in Makishima's case.

It all sounded plausible enough, but Makishima couldn't bring himself to believe a word of it. The spine-chilling terror that had crept up his legs when the creature swam toward him lingered outsize in his memory. He'd had the distinct sensation of somehow piercing a veil, of seeing _past_ an illusion meant to ensnare him. He thought it likely that it was Yamato who had never seen the true Chambers.

"What does Chambers look like?" he asked. "To you, I mean."

A beatific smile instantly appeared on Yamato's face, almost as if he had been overcome by physical pleasure. Makishima saw the businessman's normally-astute eyes go dreamy with ambition and gratification. It was an expression that Makishima had seen often in the real world—it was the surest way for him to know that he had found a tool that he could use in his important work for society.

"Chambers is…" Yamato hesitated, and Makishima could see words of adulation drip through his head, each one inferior to the emotion welling up inside him. "He's like the day when you first graduate from university and take the train into the city. You see people milling about, from all walks of life—young, old, male, female—and you know that soon enough you'll be one of them, ready to make your mark on the world. _That's_ what Chambers is. Anticipation for the future."

 _No, that's what Chambers is using to blind you: an old fool's nostalgia for the days of his youth, when the book of life wasn't yet written._ Makishima nodded and smiled. For a minute or two Kurou Yamato was in another world, another lifetime. _It would almost be pitiable, except that you've dragged other people along for the ride. You've taken away their right to make decisions as free individuals._

After indulging Yamato for as long as he could bear, Makishima pointedly cleared his throat. The older man gave a start and pulled himself back to the present. He looked at Makishima with widened eyes. "I apologize. When I think of Chambers… Well, you will understand yourself soon enough. Everyone will." The Vice-Chairman glanced at the table as if gathering his thoughts, then looked up at Makishima. "You must be wondering why I've invited you here."

"The thought did cross my mind."

"I'm here to tell you that I know— _we_ know; that is, Chambers and I—what you're planning. We know that you met with the young Enforcer. What's his name?"

"Kagari," said Makishima slowly.

"Yes, Shusei Kagari." Yamato nodded. "We know that he and his friends have enlisted you in yet _another_ plot against the Sibyl System, and that you, being you, will probably agree to help them along."

Makishima watched him in silence.

"That is all fine. We don't care. _Chambers_ doesn't care. Please don't take this the wrong way, but you're fighting the last war. There is nothing that your attempt to destroy this little brain farm can do to stop Chambers from his ultimate goal, and so _what_ you do doesn't, strictly speaking, matter."

"Why are you telling me this?"

Yamato gazed at him sharply. Despite his illness, his eyes were still capable of a surprising amount of insight. For a brief second, Makishima glimpsed an active, cunning mind at work, before the moment passed and the other man's lethargy returned. "Because I want you to know that we won't stop you."

Makishima tilted his head. "Oh?"

"If you agree to help Chambers willingly, he will allow you to do anything you want. Destroy the Sibyl System? Hell, Chambers will dynamite it for you. Bring down the Ministry of Welfare? Consider it done. If you want to tear down society's structures as they currently exist, you are free to do so."

The offer, Makishima sensed, was genuine. There was no malice or duplicity in Yamato's words. And that made the stakes even greater, for what else _did_ he want? To tear down the Sibyl System and restore freedom to Japan had been his lodestar since before he'd read a single book, since shortly after his birth. As a child he had instinctively recognized the injustice of Sibyl, and matriculating at his local high school unconstrained by a Psycho-Pass had only served to reinforce his hatred of it. The women and men he dated had said not a word of sense to him—it was as if they spoke two different languages. When he asked, _Would you like to go fishing one day?_ they would look at him quizzically and respond that they couldn't _be_ fishermen; they had been selected by the Sibyl System to be accountants, or data analysts, or software engineers. If he asked if they had ever dreamed of being an astronaut as a child, they would laugh and shake their heads and say to him that Sibyl had calculated their aptitude for zero-G flight and selected them for another career path. That was what Sibyl could never do to him—as an undefined variable Shogo was insoluble in the System's master plan. He was grit in the gears. A squeaky wheel.

After all these years, he was handed his victory on a silver plate. He could bring down the Sibyl System and move on to the next phase of his life—living it.

There was only one question left to ask, so Makishima asked it.

"What do you want me to do?"

* * *

"Are they _all_ him?"

Yayoi, a distant speck at the far end of the laboratory, pulled her head out of a bio-vat and nodded. "It's like a convention of naked, psychopathic mass-murderers," she mused, returning to Karanomori's console.

Shion curled a few strands of blond hair around her fingertip. "He's naked?" she asked thoughtfully.

"Of course."

"And?"

Yayoi shrugged. "He's no Kogami."

Shion stared at her. "How do _you_ know what Shinya looks like?" Her tone was frosty.

Kunizuka pinned the data analyst with a mischievous smile. "You know Azumi in Division Three? The tall Enforcer, judo expert? She dated Kogami for nearly a month. We're friends."

Shion's fit of pique vanished. "Oh," she said.

"Yeah," Yayoi said dryly. "Anyway, what do you suppose this is all _for?_ They wanted Makishima bad, I mean, I remember Chief Kasei's briefings. The brass were all over the idea of capturing him alive. But they did. Kogami got him. So why did Senguji make all of these clones? What's the game?"

"Well, for one, they aren't all the same." Karanomori went over to the holographic cloud and made a few expansive gestures. A depiction of Makishima's actual DNA strands appeared and spun like a cheesecake on a lazy Susan. Alongside them were lines of genetic code. As Shion advanced between each successive clone version of Makishima, there were noticeable differences.

Yayoi came closer. "What did they change?"

"It's hard to tell," Shion said. "Whoever is doing this doesn't seem to know what he needs to change to accomplish whatever he wants to do, so he's starting from scratch each time. All of the alterations involve the neuroarchitecture of the brain, though." She went to the very last Makishima-clone. Stamped over the filename was a simple statement: LAST ATTEMPT FAILED. PROJECT CANCELED. "This is the last entry. It seems they gave up in the end."

"Or they found another way to accomplish their goal," Kunizuka suggested.

Shion nodded. "It's certainly possible."

Kunizuka lifted her arms above her head and stretched like a cat. Her shoulders popped and she yawned sleepily before giving the laboratory a last once-over. "Is there anything else Makishima wanted us to do here? I'm sure he'll want to know about the… clones." She shuddered.

Shion waved the holographic cloud away and it vanished with a cool smoke effect. "I need to download these files. Give me a second." She took a portable drive from her pocket and stuck it, limpet-like, on the front of the computer.

"Do you think we should—" Yayoi began, but the lights in the laboratory suddenly switched off, casting the room into near-complete darkness. The only illumination came from the bluish glow of the two holstered Dominators.

Shion swore. "I think we should leave, if that's what you were about to say."

"It's close enough."

" _Hound One, do you read me? Are you there?"_

"We copy, Ginoza. What's going on? We're in the dark here."

" _You're not going to believe this."_ There was an emotion close to betrayal in Ginoza's tight voice. In the background, fuzzy through the static, Shion could hear the sound of police sirens. _"There's a rapid reaction force en route to your location. Ordered by the Chief herself. It's Division Two."_ The bitterness in the Enforcer's voice became even more apparent.

Division Two was the B-side to Division One's greatest hits compilation. The stars, the cream of the graduating Academy class, all petitioned to join Division One, which got the plum assignments and the more daring details. Division Two had long lived in the shadow of One; they were in some ways, Shion thought, like rivalrous siblings.

And now Division Two were coming to ensure they got their comeuppance. _Kasei's lackeys,_ she thought grimly.

"Are they going to arrest us, Hound Three?" Yayoi asked.

" _They've dispatched LEAs to all major thoroughfares around your location. They're blocking off pedestrian walkways too. It looks like it. They're bottling you guys up tight."_

Shion and Yayoi exchanged grim looks, their faces blue-lit and edged with shadow. Then both moved. Shion rolled her chair to the nearest keyboard and began entering commands furiously, her fingers a blur.

"I'll cover you," Yayoi said.

"Right."

Yayoi sprinted back to the observation room where they had entered, vaulted over the broken glass, and approached the door with her Dominator held at the ready. She peered around the corner with one eye visible, then threw herself backward in one desperate lunge. She slammed against the low wall opposite the laboratory, wincing as sharp pieces of glass sliced through her shirt. "Should have worn tactical kit," she muttered to herself.

A cone of furious blue light erupted like a firehose, blasting the doorway where she had been standing seconds before. A Paralyzer round.

"Not even a verbal warning," Yayoi said under her breath. "So much for policy."

She gained her feet and held the Dominator with both hands. Skipping over to the right, she took a deep, steadying breath, then stepped into the doorway. _There,_ at the far end of the hallway, she saw her targets: two men and a woman, Enforcers and their Inspector. She thought she recognized the Inspector. They'd eaten lunch together in the cafeteria a handful of times. "Sorry," Yayoi whispered.

Lining up the shot, all of the tension went out of her body. She was _one_ with the Dominator—it became an extension of her hands, an outgrowth of her will. She aimed and pulled the trigger.

Sharp intake of breath. The Dominator seemed to pulsate with charged energies, then—

The blue glow inlaid along the Dominator's sleek black barrel faded. The weapon powered itself down, closed in on itself like a flower's petals after dark.

"No," Yayoi said. "No, no, _no."_ She pulled the trigger several more times, desperately, but it might as well have been a toy gun. The Dominator stubbornly refused to fire.

" _Target identified as Ministry of Welfare Public Safety Bureau officers. Target invalid. This weapon will now shut down. Have a nice day."_

Yayoi saw the two Enforcers gesticulate wildly in her direction, and their Inspector nodded, clearly giving permission to fire. Then both hounds raised their weapons simultaneously, and Yayoi knew she had to _move_.

This time she threw herself clear over the shattered partition, tucking her shoulder into a spine-shattering roll. She came up in a sprint and raced back to her partner. Behind her, dual Paralyzers turned the remnants of the observation room into rubble with a sound like a miniature earthquake.

"Almost done?" she panted, throwing a glance over her shoulder.

"A few more seconds." Shion looked at her, saw the blood seeping from her shirt. "What happened to you?"

"Dominators don't work."

"Oh."

"Yeah." Yayoi picked up one of the glass dissection vessels and hefted it thoughtfully. "Could throw these at them. What do you think?"

"I'd rather use the other door, thanks."

"I thought it was locked."

Shion entered one last command, then removed the portable drive from the computer and stood. The light pulsing above the main exit changed from red to green, and there was a loud grinding sound, as of metal sliding against metal.

The door slid open silently.

"You were saying?"

Yayoi shrugged. "I'm not complaining."

Shion nodded to the door, and the two Enforcers jogged over to it. "How many were there?" she asked.

"Three of the Bureau's finest," Yayoi said. "Two Enforcers, one Inspector. Thought I recognized her."

"I heard a Paralyzer round," Shion said, as they peered through the exit and saw that it was dark and completely deserted. They made their way into the hallway, which extended about a dozen yards to another door. The walls were spare and steel, featureless apart from regular two-inch by two-inch patches of glass, like miniature windows. Motion detectors. On the ceiling hung glossy orbs of black plastic. Omnidirectional security cameras. _They've got this place locked down tight._ "Thought it was _you_ firing."

"No, it was them."

"If _their_ Dominators work and ours don't, then it's official," Shion said grimly. "Sibyl knows which side we're on."

"It was bound to happen sooner or later. I just hope Tsunemori knows what she's doing."

The door at the end of the hallway had a knob, and it wasn't locked. It opened onto what appeared to be a dormitory, as austere and spartan as the rest of the building. Smooth gray concrete floors gleamed underfoot from the reflection of eight light-bars set into the ceiling. The bare walls, also concrete here, were studded with motion sensors, and bordered rows of military-style cots aligned with institutional precision. Along one wall, tile replaced concrete beneath steel toilets that lacked the privacy of partitions or doors. In one corner of the room hung a steel showerhead; drains were set into a concavity of the floor.

"They had people living here?" Yayoi asked.

Shion went to the only other door and tried the knob. Locked. "They probably killed whoever was responsible for the research here, once they were no longer useful," she said coolly. "Why leave any loose ends to tangle up? Neater, that way."

She pulled a device out of her breast pocket, about the size and shape of a handheld calculator. It looked like a calculator, too, except it ended in an array of cords tipped with ports, cables, and connectors, almost like a digital cat-o'-nine-tails. Next to the locked door was an iris scanner with a small jack. Shion selected the corresponding plug and inserted it into the jack, then held the calculator up. "Your eye, please," she murmured.

Yayoi shrugged and widened one eye to peer into the calculator's lens. After a few seconds the calculator beeped, the iris scanner acknowledged the beep with one of its own, and the door popped open. Shion pocketed the calculator and pushed the door open. Behind them, in the direction of the laboratory, they could hear low-pitched urgent voices. A sweep. "Let's go."

The door led into a stairwell. They took the steps two at a time and descended four flights. The exit at the bottom of the stairwell opened into a below-ground parking garage.

"They aren't waiting for us?" Yayoi asked, gazing around the expanse of asphalt in surprise.

Shion unholstered her Dominator—an old habit from her training, even if the thing was useless—and crouched, peered under the tires of the dozen or so parked cars. There didn't _seem_ to be anyone lying in wait for them. "I'm starting to get the feeling that this isn't a sanctioned Bureau operation," she said. "Like maybe the Chief, or Sibyl, or whoever is calling the shots wants to keep this nice and quiet. Maybe they don't want anyone other than Division Two involved in this."

"If that's true, then we have a chance."

Shion carefully closed the door leading into the stairwell behind them. "Maybe. Ginoza did say there were LEAs cordoning off this area." Law Enforcement Automatons were incapable of delivering lethal force, but they did carry a full suite of cameras, sensors, and radio equipment. They could track and run to ground any suspects that tried to flee from the MWPSB.

They made their way across the floor of the parking garage as quickly and as stealthily as possible, which wasn't very. If the sweep team showed up now, it would be a turkey shoot for their Enforcers' Dominators—less than five hundred feet, twin targets, no cover? They would be Paralyzed instantly. But through some form of luck or providence, the Division Two tactical team exited the stairwell at the same time that Shion and Yayoi were most of the way up the driveway.

The Division Two team began shouting after them, but they didn't wait around to hear what their pursuers wanted. The parking garage had barriers designed to keep cars out, not people, so they vaulted over them and sprinted into the warm summer night. Okaba street was near a public park, and the smell of cherry blossoms filled the air. "Get Ginoza on the radio," Shion began. "Tell him to meet us—"

The Paralyzer round hit Yayoi in the legs. She went down in a tumble, instantly unconscious, her arms splayed wide on the asphalt. Shion dove to the right, toward the curb and a pair of trees, causing the second shot to miss her. But before she could get to cover, a sonic grenade landed a few feet away. She looked at it in horror, knowing that there was nothing she could do. The grenade buzzed like wind-up toy and began to emit a high-pitched scream. Then it, and all awareness, vanished as Shion crumpled to the ground.


End file.
